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Description
The Order of the Tesseract is a group of Mog'Therran monks who are devoted to the study of time and space. They are generally most well known for staffing and guarding the 10 Jump Gates placed strategically around the former Empire of Many Suns, as well as maintaining them.
Even after the fall of the Mog'Therran empire, the Tesseractian Monks retain tremendous power. The gates do not open without their say so, and without the stargates, commerce between the former subjects of the empire would be nearly impossible. That is beginning to change, however. The nearby human empire known as the Terran Protectorate has introduced Negative Mass Drives to other species. While they are nowhere near as fast as the instantaneous wormholes created by the Jump Gates, they are so small and affordable that independent spacers can now afford small transports of their own.
Still, the Jump Gates can cut months of travel time off a trip within the empire, and are likely to be a powerful factor in commerce for some time to come.
The monks themselves are a bit of a mystery. They have studied the motions of time and space on a level few other mortal beings can comprehend...and some say that whatever forces they deal with have somewhat detached them from time itself. Some are even rumored to be able to see into the distant future or past by comtemplating a tesseract, or hypercube, found in an old Vorhasi scout ship. This tesseract, a cube with more than three dimensions, is supposedly what made the creation of the Jump Gates possible. By unraveling its mysteries, the Tesseractian monks learned to manipulate the curvature of space-time itself. Whether that was the extent of their discoveries is unknown. But they've had the tesseract for hundreds of years, and its hard to believe that one discovery was all they made....
The first job of the monks is to defend the gates from anyone who would control or monopolize them. They generally do this by threatening to shut down gate operations, increasing fees, etc. But sometimes they need to get a bit more aggressive in their negotiations, which they seem to be very capable of doing.

Description
The Order of the Tesseract is a group of Mog'Therran monks who are devoted to the study of time and space. They are generally most well known for staffing and guarding the 10 Jump Gates placed strategically around the former Empire of Many Suns, as well as maintaining them.
Even after the fall of the Mog'Therran empire, the Tesseractian Monks retain tremendous power. The gates do not open without their say so, and without the stargates, commerce between the former subjects of the empire would be nearly impossible. That is beginning to change, however. The nearby human empire known as the Terran Protectorate has introduced Negative Mass Drives to other species. While they are nowhere near as fast as the instantaneous wormholes created by the Jump Gates, they are so small and affordable that independent spacers can now afford small transports of their own.
Still, the Jump Gates can cut months of travel time off a trip within the empire, and are likely to be a powerful factor in commerce for some time to come.
The monks themselves are a bit of a mystery. They have studied the motions of time and space on a level few other mortal beings can comprehend...and some say that whatever forces they deal with have somewhat detached them from time itself. Some are even rumored to be able to see into the distant future or past by comtemplating a tesseract, or hypercube, found in an old Vorhasi scout ship. This tesseract, a cube with more than three dimensions, is supposedly what made the creation of the Jump Gates possible. By unraveling its mysteries, the Tesseractian monks learned to manipulate the curvature of space-time itself. Whether that was the extent of their discoveries is unknown. But they've had the tesseract for hundreds of years, and its hard to believe that one discovery was all they made....
The first job of the monks is to defend the gates from anyone who would control or monopolize them. They generally do this by threatening to shut down gate operations, increasing fees, etc. But sometimes they need to get a bit more aggressive in their negotiations, which they seem to be very capable of doing.