Century Gate

First Appearance and Context

The Century Gate is noted alongside the Year and Decade gates when the concent’s waterworks and timed portals are described during an Apert. Water from an upstream aqueduct is routed to a pond near the Day Gate; from there, drains feed systems of pipes and siphons that run out toward the Year, Decade, and Century Gates. Those systems remain dry except at Apert. In the same account, the mechanisms that opened the Year and Decade gates were seen to activate, while the Century system did not charge, underscoring its much rarer cycle. A bastion across the river houses these interval gates, reached by a stone bridge whose railing conceals a driveshaft. In the same period, an extramuros metalworks compound is described as lying approximately a quarter of a mile from the Century Gate at the end of a slip dug from the river.

Roles/Actions and Affiliations

• Timed portal in the same family as the Year Gate and the Decade Gate, governed by the great Clock housed in the Mynster.
• Associated with the Centenarians’ long‑cycle Apert; in practice it opens on a hundred‑year rhythm and functions as the Centenarian community’s rare outward portal.
• The mechanisms coupled to this and related gates are tended by the Ita.

Relationships

• Counterpart and longer‑interval peer to the Year Gate and the Decade Gate.
• Preparations for its rare opening involve controlled exchanges with the Centenarians via the Upper Labyrinth.

Descriptions/Characteristics

• Location and actuation: Situated in an outer‑wall bastion across the river. A water‑driven wheel in the near‑bank tower turns a concealed driveshaft across the bridge to gear the gate’s hinge pins.
• Hydraulic feed: An aqueduct and buried pipework charge the system from an elevated pond; these lines to the Century Gate remain dry except at Apert.
• Clock coupling: Earlier observations within the Mynster describe a dodecahedron auxiliary weight that actuates this gate on its long interval, paralleling the cube (Year) and octahedron (Decade) weights.

Current Status/Location

During the observed Apert, only the yearly and decennial systems were charged; the Century system remained inactive and the gate stayed closed. Consistent with its long cycle, the associated weight has been seen high on its rail awaiting its appointed opening.