The Prime is a settlement inside The Prime Beast. It is occupied by goatlike Prime Imps, insectoid people, enigmatic robots, and strange ink-and-rubber constructs.
The long-past predecessors of the Prime Imps were cognizant of the growing danger of the Prime Beast, which started by devouring asteroids, then moons, planets, stars, star systems, galaxies... They devised and enacted a plan, to convert the Beast's unborn offspring from potential universe-devourers to collection and storage devices. They managed to create 151 "gates" to "lesser universes." The devoured worlds were, effectively, destroyed in any event, but the Gates hold the entire fabric of the subject reality, and, upon reaching a preset conclusion event, reset to a predefined set of conditions; they "cycle."
