The Gates that appear during the Churning allow travel to a unique and strategically important extra-planar realm known to mortals as Veilguard.
Only certain mortals are able to pass through the Gates and enter Veilguard; those who are not Veilwalkers simply walk through the Gates and end up on the other side, still in the mortal realm. When a Veilwalker leaves Veilguard through a Gate, they exit at the same Gate they entered the demiplane. It isn’t possible to travel from one part of the Continent to another via Veilguard’s Gates, with the exception of very short visits via the Godscore Gate.
There’s a fairly simple test to determine if someone is a Veilwalker — if you overcharge a piece of stone marked with the Thuul rune with magic, it will vibrate slightly when pressed against the skin of a Veilwalker. Every nation has vaults full of such stones, which they use to scour their populations for Veilwalkers whenever a Churning begins.
Despite millennia of research, nobody knows exactly what determines whether someone becomes a Veilwalker or not, though a desire for adventure, a yearning to see new things and meet new people, seems to be a common trait in many Veilwalkers. The one thing they all have in common, though, is that they are never important people before they become Veilwalkers. For some reason, the energies of the liminal space that is the Veil never resonate with those who have weight and importance in the world, and so one never sees princes or generals becoming Veilwalkers, only those of a more humble origin such as shopkeeps and line soldiers.
While in Veilguard, Veilwalkers stop being entirely mortal — they can still die, but when they do their bodies and all of the equipment they were carrying dissolve into mist and reform in the mists bordering the town. Some five to thirty minutes after death, they just wake up in the mists and walk back out into Veilguard. Moreover, any wounds they have taken before their death, such as losing an eye or a limb, are usually fully healed in this process of “respawning,” though the more grievous wounds are sometimes incompletely healed by the process and must be mended by a Physick after the Veilwalker respawns.
This has had some significant impacts on how society functions within Veilguard. Murder, assassination, capital punishment, and mutilation are merely inconvenient instead of being serious threats, and it’s difficult to effectively whittle away at a rival or enemy’s numbers by killing them off. Moreover, it only takes dying to escape from any prison, imposing significantly higher requirements on any effective jail or imprisonment than are normally required.
Diplomacy and jockeying for position and resources becomes the de facto method of striving for success, rather than there always being the threat of force with serious consequences for those who violate the peace. If someone must be executed for some reason, they are usually forcibly escorted outside of Veilguard and slain by the security forces of their nation, though such executions are usually performed only after significant crimes that cannot be excused by their nation’s government.
Veilguard is suffused with dimensional energy concentrated from the surrounding Veil, and those who spend time there find that their personal abilities (whether in combat, magic, or crafting) grow at a massively increased rate during and after their time in the demiplane. This makes Veilwalkers not only powerful due to the strategic implications of Veilguard and the Godscore Gate but also in a personal sense — after a few years of a Churning the Veilwalkers who regularly enter Veilguard tend to become some of the best fighters and most capable mages on the Continent.
Unfortunately, this also has the side effect of wearing away at the immortality that Veilguard offers; after a Veilwalker has grown to a certain level of power, the next time they die and respawn the process causes something to go terribly wrong inside their body, leaving them Terminal and with a life-expectancy of days or weeks. This means that the more experience a Veilwalker gains, the more cautious they tend to become — the immortality offered by Veilguard has a time limit, and they must be aware of it if they don’t wish to die a true death. (See the Death & Respawn rules for more details.)
Veilguard is only open for very short periods during the year, and so Veilwalkers must make the most of the time they have in the planar crossroads. The Gates tend to appear at predictable times in the year, though the exact day they appear can change without warning. After they first appear, it takes them around a week to stabilize. Once they stabilize, they remain stable and open for Veilwalkers to pass in and out of Veilguard at will for approximately five days, at which point they abruptly destabilize and disappear. No method attempted in the last three millennia has been able to keep them open or make them stabilize more quickly.
One peculiarity that many knights and merchants have frequently mourned is that the Gates don’t allow any animals except for dogs through into Veilguard. Horses, oxen, and any other beasts accompanying a Veilwalker simply fail to pass through a Gate leading into Veilguard, the magic of the Gate breaking any tethers used to try to get them through. It’s still unknown why this occurs, or why dogs are the only beasts able to accompany Veilwalker to Veilguard, though speculation is rife in scholarly circles.
Regardless of why it happens, this forces Veilwalkers to act strictly as infantry in any military sorties they make through the Godscore Gate, and limits their ability to bring in a large weight of goods to trade in Veilguard.