A huge Strogg Slipgate activating in Earth orbit.
Seen in use in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Strogg Slipgates are the devices which the Strogg use to invade alien worlds and harvest their native fauna.
They come in several sizes; some so vast that entire armadas of spaceships can travel through them across the immense void of space, while others are small enough to be considered portable, being deployed on the battlefield to provide a direct link to reinforcements, which may be located many thousands of miles away.
Technology[]
These circular gate-like constructs permit users to travel long distances instantly. The precise means by which they allow such instantaneous travel across the universe is as yet unexplained. In Quake 2, a Black Hole Generator is credited with allowing this intergalactic travel, indicating that without said generator, the Slipgates will not work. Whether there is a link between the generator and every Slipgate, near and far, or whether gates deployed in distant solar systems require their own generators, is not known.
Small-scale portable Slipgates have not been witnessed in operation on Stroggos itself. This may be due to the advent of Teleportation technology, which has been observed in operation in a number of surface complexes, as well as in facilities in orbit. Despite the dawn of Teleport tech, however, one would still expect to encounter old, perhaps no longer functioning Slipgates every now and then, given the apparent importance to the Strogg military machine of fast travel, but to date none have yet been found on the Strogg homeworld.
Battlefield Use[]
A Strogg invasion fleet utilizing a Slipgate
In Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, (the only current chronicle of the Strogg War on Earth), relatively small Slipgates are seen deployed in battle, facilitating the transportation of Strogg reinforcements (including large mechanized units) instantaneously from one side of the Earth to another.
Use By Humanity[]
During the Earth war, Human GDF forces seized and used a Strogg Slipgate in North Africa to access and destroy the the primary command and control center for all Strogg forces on Earth - a Nexus, located in Antarctica.
GDF soldiers capture a planetside Slipgate
Examples of many technologies, including the Slipgates, soon fell into GDF hands, enabling Human scientists to study and gradually understand it.
After the Strogg were driven off-world and back through their Slipgate, Mankind began plotting its revenge and, following the successful testing and deployment of several Slipgate-capable spaceships, sent to Stroggos two large troop-carrying vessels, accompanied by several smaller ships, through the same Slipgate through which the Strogg first arrived. Humans were afraid that another slipgate may be hidden in the solar system and may start another invasion, so they decided to fight back.
In the Quake II manual's mission briefing, it is stated that "It may be a long sleep back" for the Human ships after the Black Hole Generator on Stroggos is disabled. This strongly suggests that Human scientists hadn't yet worked out how to create ship-portable Slipgates and Black Hole Generators from scratch to enable a swift return, or that if they did know how to make them, they lacked the resources to create and/or power them.
Trivia[]
- The shape of the Slipgates very closely resembles the Quake logo. Slipgates are also present in Quake which is strange along with Strogg symbols in crates and walls in Base levels of the original Quake, this has led some players to speculate that the Protagonist in Quake is some type of ancient Strogg. However his contradicts with the story since in the official story of Quake it is said that earth is being invaded not Stroggos.
- After the events of Quake II it is stated that the initial invasion force was stranded on Stroggos due to the disabling of the Black Hole Generator which powered the Slipgate. With no way to return home the invasion force is apparently stranded in the Stroggos system. However, in the opening cinematic of Quake IV a large number of warships from Earth are seen approaching Stroggos. The Black Hole Generator is still inoperable meaning that the Earth-based warships could not have used the Slipgate used by the first invasion. This suggests that scientists from Earth have either created their own Slipgates powered by another source or have developed another means of interstellar travel. It is possible that humanity has used Strogg technology, in the same way they designed their warships in the first place, to develop their own Slipgates. Newer starships, unlike the Phobos and Deimos which rely on Strogg Slipgates, may have been outfitted with non-Slipgate portal technology. Humanity has proven itself capable of reverse engineering Strogg technology, they used captured Strogg starships to develop their own interstellar warships, to create advanced technologies. This suggests that the idea that while the first invasion force may have initially been stranded the arrival of the second force now means it is able to return home.