Because of the temporal paradoxes involved in time travel, the gates are a threat to universal causality and therefore to the future of innumerable worlds. In fact, as presented in the backstory of the Cycle, unwise use of the gates' temporal properties has already decimated at least one highly advanced civilization, the qhal. To prevent additional such calamities, Morgaine is engaged on a centuries-long (and potentially infinite) quest that takes her from world to world via the gates, setting each gate to self-destruct just after she has used it to move on to the next. It is not clear from the storyline how long Morgaine has been traveling, but it is spelled out that she is the last survivor, possibly second-generation, of a one hundred member task force sent by the Union Science Bureau with the mission of destroying the gates. There has been attrition over time, with an act of treachery prior to the first novel leaving Morgaine the sole survivor.