Architects

Little-known alien race responsible for creating door-sized "gateways," devices capable of sending the user across space and time, or even to alternate universes, on mental command. One such device somehow found its way into the back wall of the Good Time Chinese Restaurant in Lawndale, which led to the bizarre adventures recounted in the third-season episode "Depth Takes a Holiday." The Architects were first mentioned in the fanfic "Illusions" (by CharlieGirl, Angelinhel, and TAG) and resurfaced in Lycissa's "Second Chances" and "End of the Line," and TAG's "Guys' Night Out."

In "Illusions," the supernatural character Angel said the Architects were "aliens from another arm in this galaxy. The Architects made those inter-universal gateways about half a billion years ago, loads of them, and ran all over the place with them. Beings that find the gates now tend to hide them away for whatever purpose they can dream up, like sneaking into other people’s homes—or invading other worlds or universes." She added that the Architects "are all gone, dead most likely."

A gateway appears to be a large bar of dull gray metal bend in roughly the size and shape of a doorframe. To use it, one must touch the metal bar and think about where (or in what time period) the user wishes to visit. The user then steps through the gateway and comes out at the desired destination.

Angel noted that each gateway emits a "a multi-planar resonance signature," a kind of telepathic nudge that acts as "a come-hither signal, a way of ensuring that someone finds it." Such signals manifest themselves in various ways (dreams, ideas for stories, visions, impulses to do certain things, etc.), but direct the recipients to a specific location (such as Lawndale's Good Time Chinese Restaurant) so the gateway can be discovered and utilized. The signal is so powerful that it crosses into parallel universes that are similar to the universe where the device exists. Thus, in a universe in which Good Time does not have a gateway, certain people might feel an impulse to go to that restaurant, or else have odd dreams about it in which they meet strange people who have come through a wormhole or gate in that restaurant, have the urge to write science-fiction or fantasy stories about that restaurant, and so on. It is possible that the presence of an Architects' gateway in a certain location predisposes that spot, in alternate universes, to spontaneously develop an interdimensional wormhole on its own, or else cause other beings to create the same in the same location.

Unknown to everyone, the gateways are also intelligent and possibly malign, often sending the users to dangerous worlds or disastrous encounters, perverting the travelers' actual intent in using the devices. Use of a gateway also appears to be psychologically addictive, causing travelers to never stop using them until the travelers are eventually destroyed by what they encounter. Even a powerful being like Angel is herself vulnerable in an undefined way to the presence of the Architects' gateways. Were she to use one, it would induce a sort of insane power hunger in her that she described as similar to what Galadriel (of The Lord of the Rings) claimed would happen to her were she to receive the One Ring (see The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter VII).

Gateways were the last devices created by the Architects, who became entirely extinct within an extremely short time after the gateways were employed. How or why that happened is unknown, but the gateways may have deliberately brought about their creators' demise.

The organization known as DELPHI has recently learned of the existence of the gateways, and has made securing one for study and use a standing priority for all operatives and associated groups.