Guardian

Selection and Binding

When a Guardian first activates their Portal Key, the device performs its binding ritual: a sharp prick draws blood from the user's finger, collecting a DNA sample that creates an unbreakable bond between individual and artefact. This blood-binding transforms the Portal Key from dormant technology into living connection, attuned exclusively to its Guardian's biological signature. No other person can activate another Guardian's Portal Key, making this bond both a mystical covenant and technological safeguard.

Group Structure and Hierarchy

Guardians operate within an elegant hierarchical system that balances autonomy with interconnection. The original Guardian who receives new Portal Keys directly from Clivilius holds the title Guardian Atum—the source, the beginning. These rare individuals carry the weight of founding entirely new settlement lineages.

When Clivilius bestows additional Portal Keys upon an existing Guardian, those recipients become Guardian Atum, inheriting the responsibility of distributing those five new Portal Key to establish their own Guardian Group and Clivilius settlement. The five Guardians within each new group are called Guardian Atum Ra-Ling, a term meaning "sibling-spirits of the divine source," symbolising their profound bond forged through shared purpose and mutual dependence.

This nomenclature reflects ancient understanding that Guardianship transcends mere occupation—it represents family obligation written across dimensional boundaries.

Settlement Establishment

When the first Guardian in a new group activates their Portal Key, it tears open a gateway to a random, unsettled location in Clivilius. The Portal's destination cannot be chosen or predicted; Clivilius itself determines where each new settlement shall take root.

These virgin sites present formidable challenges—vast expanses of dust and rocks, perhaps a water source, and beneath it all, the hard crust that must be broken through to reach Clivilius's unique three-layer soil system. They are blank canvases devoid of life, waiting for human hands to write their first chapters.

The Guardians' primary mission is transforming these desolate landscapes into thriving settlements capable of preserving Earth's knowledge, history and resources whilst creating sustainable communities that can endure for generations. Every crop planted, every structure raised, every system established represents an act of defiance against the void.

Portal Mechanics and Access

Initially, a new Guardian Group shares access to a single Portal in Clivilius—a communal gateway appearing as a giant translucent screen when inactive, shimmering with otherworldly luminescence when activated. This shared Portal forces cooperation, ensuring that early decisions about Earth-Clivilius travel are made collectively.

As the settlement establishes itself and the group demonstrates viability, each Guardian eventually gains their own personal Portal within the settlement.

Non-Guardians who enter Clivilius through a Portal cannot return to Earth. The Portal Key's blood-binding ensures that only its attuned Guardian can traverse the dimensional barrier in both directions, making Guardians the sole bridges between worlds and rendering every recruitment decision permanent.

Roles and Responsibilities

Within each Guardian Group, members assume specific roles ensuring their settlement's success and prosperity. These role divisions emerge organically from individual strengths, settlement needs and group dynamics.

Leadership typically falls to the first Guardian, though democratic or consensus-based governance also exists. Resource management encompasses everything from water collection to agricultural planning to supply runs on Earth. Knowledge preservation—perhaps the most sacred Guardian duty—involves establishing libraries, archives and educational systems that safeguard Earth's accumulated wisdom.

Defence responsibilities have grown increasingly vital as settlements face threats from hostile forces, environmental disasters and internal conflicts. Diplomacy between settlements, with Earth contacts and potentially with Clivilius itself requires Guardians skilled in negotiation and cultural translation.

These roles often overlap and evolve, reflecting the fluid nature of frontier societies where survival demands versatility.

Earth Operations and Secrecy

Guardians often work in secrecy on Earth, operating through front companies, carefully cultivated networks and deliberate misdirection. They gather resources that Clivilius cannot yet provide—seeds and livestock, technology and tools, books and data archives, medicines and supplies. They recruit potential settlers, identifying individuals whose skills, character and circumstances make them candidates for permanent relocation.

This clandestine nature frequently creates tensions with Earth's societies, as Guardian activities operate outside conventional social and legal frameworks. Acquisitions that appear as theft, disappearances that seem suspicious, wealth that has no traceable origin—all attract attention from law enforcement, intelligence services and criminal organisations alike.

Some Guardians maintain dual lives, balancing earthly careers with their Clivilian responsibilities. Others abandon Earth entirely, severing all connections to focus solely on their settlements. The psychological toll of this double existence cannot be understated; many Guardians struggle with isolation, moral compromise and the weight of secrets that can never be shared.

Survival Challenges and Failure

Establishing successful settlements in Clivilius proves extraordinarily difficult, with failure rates remaining devastatingly high. Many new communities collapse within their first few years, succumbing to harsh environmental conditions that test human endurance.

Resource shortages—particularly water and arable soil—can doom settlements before they achieve self-sufficiency. Internal conflicts tear apart Guardian Groups when the pressure of survival exposes incompatibilities or when disagreements over priorities escalate into irreconcilable divisions.

Disease, accidents and violence claim lives in environments where medical care is primitive and rescue impossible. Some settlements face external threats from hostile settlements.

Only the most resilient and well-organised Guardian Groups create thriving communities capable of moving beyond mere survival to focus on long-term goals: preserving Earth's legacy, contributing to Clivilian civilisation and safeguarding humanity's future across two worlds.

The Guardian Order

A secret society known as the Guardian Order operates independently of individual Guardian Groups, working behind the scenes to guide and support Guardians in their mission. This ancient organisation predates modern Guardian settlements, maintaining institutional knowledge spanning centuries.

The Guardian Order provides coordination across the scattered network of settlements, facilitates communication and trade, offers sanctuary to Guardians in crisis and preserves records of every settlement's rise and fall. Their influence remains subtle yet pervasive—a Guardian might receive anonymous assistance at a critical moment, discover resources strategically positioned where needed or find doors mysteriously opened when all seemed lost.

The Order ensures that Earth's knowledge and legacy are preserved for generations to come, recognising that individual settlements may fail but the greater mission must endure. Their ultimate goals remain opaque even to many Guardians, leading to speculation about deeper purposes and hidden agendas within this shadowed institution.