The Seven Gates

The Seven Gates are located between The Medium and Skaia. In order to reach each gate, the client player's house must build upwards by the server player. The first gate leads to a location on the player's designated planet, the second leading to the player's server's house on their planet, the third further into the server's planet, fourth on to the server's server's house, and so on.

If a player attempts to go through a gate leading to the planet of a player who has not yet entered, the gate skips that planet and goes to the next. In Alternate Future Dave's timeline, the gate which would have normally led from LOHAC to Jade's LOFAF instead led to LOWAS.

It is feasible that one can simply float or be thrown to each gate, but Nannasprite states that in John's case it would not serve his purpose well. In one timeline, John skips straight to the seventh gate using his Rocket Pack, but as it turns out, the seventh gate leads him to meet with his Denizen, a battle which someone who hadn't worked their way up to would be sorely underleveled for (unless it was actually possible to kill one in its sleep). This may be why Nannasprite advised John against it in the first place, as skipping ahead would leave him very underleveled and unprepared for the following gates.

Rose manages to build John's house up to the first gate, and John fights his way past numerous Shale Imps and Crude Ogres in order to get there. Afterward, he leaps through the center of the gate in a triumphant pose and is teleported to a different part of the Land of Wind and Shade; his second gate further in the LOWAS transports him to Rose's House in the Land of Light and Rain.

The gates' color appears to reflect the players' Associated Colors. So far, John's gates are blue, Rose's are purple, Dave's are red and Jade's gates are green. This is shown further in the gristTorrent interface, as John's grist is marked by a blue gate, Rose's by a purple and Dave's by a red gate.

Apparently the Gates are destructible. Rose manages to destroy her first gate at the end of act 4. She confirms its destruction in the conclusion of her Walkthrough in the beginning of the Act 4 Epilogue.

The gates are animated Epicycloids, shapes that can be drawn with a Spirograph. The Seven Gates, or at least the spirograph image, appear frequently throughout the comic.
 * It appears as a 'logo' of sorts for the Sburb game.
 * It appears on John Egbert's calendar as the picture for April. It surrounds the Sburb house icon in this instance.
 * It appears as the loading/install screen for the Sburb beta.
 * It appears on nearly all of the deployed Alchemization equipment.
 * The unprototyped Kernelsprite looks like it.
 * It appears on the hatch of WV's Skyship Base.
 * It appears on the fuel tank and storage compartments of WV's laboratory.
 * It appears on the package for the Sburb server CD and the CDs themselves.
 * It surrounds Skaia whenever the Incipisphere is shown.
 * It appears next as the "spirograph" in the door in the centre of WV's lab.
 * It appears as defense gates of Skaia that send the meteors of the Reckoning to Earth.
 * The different variations of the Gates appear on Jade's flowers, as well as on one of her loading screens.
 * It appears as one of Jade's many shirt symbols.
 * It appears much later in the bottom of the 'S' in the Skaianet logo.
 * It appears again on the side of the SkaiaNet Laboratory before it is unestablished.
 * One appears over each of the players' grist caches on the gristTorrent program.
 * The White Queen holds a key in the shape of a gate.
 * The gates are depicted on the side on the Frog Temple.

The Trolls' Gates
It remains unknown how many gates sit above each Troll's hive in The Medium. In the kids' session, each planet has two gates associated with each player (aside from the one in question) and an extra for the Denizen. If the trolls follow this pattern, they would need to have 23 gates in order to have full access to each other planet. It is more likely, however, they also have seven gates, corresponding to their Frog Temples.

Vriska tells Tavros that he will fight his Denizen after the seventh gate. However, she was lying and sent him to his second gate instead, which lead him to her house. All troll gates which have been seen match the trolls' colors, except Karkat's gates. They are shown to match his text color here.