Orthodox Porters are called Old Watchmen. This is a play on words with the Golden Watch Makers of the Everlasting Fountain.
A very patient man, who was the first professor of The Fountain, started an organization called The Font of the Timepiece-makers. Originally The Fountain was discovered by vibrating gold rhythmically over many years (years later gold protected in a shell of marra), which could also be used to resonate water, which allowed for the creation of the lockports, which the Powerful were more interested in, lacking the patience required to possibly experience The Fountain. Professors of The Fountain made time-pieces for vibrating gold, which was a process as involved as growing a bonsai tree, requiring years of training and concerted effort. They were eventually called Golden Watch-makers. And later, Old Watchmen.
Watchmen call them timepieces, but more generally they are called watches.
Old Watchmen were patient at waiting in isolation. They sat watch over the lockports. There were years of inactivity when the lockports were inactive. They weren’t idle there were just solo travelers who were Old Watchmen.
Porters were well known for keeping absolutely exact time, which was necessary in lockport travel, and helpful for captains. Lockports were better timed than train stations. Porters stopped making the timepieces when it was discovered that one could bathe in the fountain, using resonated water, rather than resonated gold. The younger generation took the easier route. Once the technique was perfected, resonating water only took a couple of hours.
Porters can only bathe in the fountain, using water, if they remain on the lockport islands. Truman stays there so he can marry Judith, since he himself had already had the patience to make a working timepiece at the very young age of 23. Most of the Old Watchmen worked for 20 years, and were at least 40, before making a working timepiece. Truman had done it in 10, starting at age 13, due to extreme focus on the task.
He made a timepiece for Judith, which took him 7 years. But by that time they had children, so he started making more for his children—not as a means of escape, but rather as a matter of orthodoxy—but other demands, and other things to build had slowed him down. He would not be able to give them their timepieces until they were adults. Judith takes the timepiece with her when she leaves, telling herself that she will still bathe in the fountain now-and-then, but soon abandons porter practices, and gives the timepiece to Alice, on a whim.
Marra makes the timepieces sturdy. The timepieces were originally mostly gold, but later many of the parts were replaced with sturdier metals. A timepiece of marra only has two inner surfaces of gold, protected by the marra. These watches are almost indestructible.
Traveling from planet to planet is traditionally only done as a rite of passage to visit Mercea at 14, and then again as part of his marriage ceremony to Judith.
The First Watchmen are two great men and one woman, they are like prophets and great patriarchs. They were great enough to conquer the veil between dimensions, to travel to the other side and back again, and they offer immortality on the other side to all who die. Porters believe in the seemingly supernatural claims, while the rest of the galaxy just believes they were great scientists and inventors with eccentric delusions. They discovered the technology that powers the gates.
These First Watchmen are related in some way to our real world as and us as creators of the game world.
Even non-traditional porters have a limited belief in the supernatural aspects of the gates, because of the occurrences they witness in their job. The Mother Fountain is the divine feminine, the central fountain, she is a deep pool below, but she is also a fountain because she reaches out.
The history of orthodox Porter theology is not central to the story, but has a depth that seeps out sometimes. Prayer is called “bathing in the fountain”. When Judith doesn’t spend time bathing in the fountain, she is weakened against the phenomena, but she doesn’t notice because she spends more time in her fantasy and subtly rationalizing; and less time fighting.