Gates are doorways between places, they connect two dimensions together or two places within the same dimension. They are magically complex and efficient. Being able to tap into the gate network allows you to travel to many places. However navigating the network is very difficult as the interconnections between gates are mysterious and ever changing.
There are rudimentary gates that exist that are not properly connected to the gate network. As a result they might be highly inefficient or have other deficiencies such as being unidirectional.
Some gates are natural rips that are stabilized. These dimensional rips can be noticed as shimmers in the air. Most that see them consider the rips to be heat hallucinations but those that know better recognize them for what they are. Once a rip is located it often must be made larger so that someone might travel in it. Doing so however will make it unstable. No one is sure what happens when a rip collapses sometimes those that get caught in it come back to society after many decades of travelling. Other times only limbs are left. Gates that stabilize rips are often times the most efficient as they are simply keeping a whole open rather than tunnelling through dimensions however they never lose their instability.
Artificial rips are often called seams. The process of creating a seam involves cutting out of the dimension into the other. Things that dictate the stability of a rip or seam is if they are with or against the grain of the dimensions. How clean they are in other words how ragged are the edges, in how many different directions they branch and the general stability of the local dimensional space.
The gates made by the Konungariket are made of a dark unkown material which has mate finish. One thing of interest about this material is that depending on the angle that it is looked at the gate takes on different colours. The Konungariket gates are also set in a common way. They all sit on a raised platform of local stone as well a flag pole sits beside the gate. Back in the day before the fall of the Konungariket the local government would mount their flag upon the mast.