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Portals

Contents

  1. On the Nature of Portals
    1. Finding a Portal
    2. Types of Portal
    3. Portal Keys

On the Nature of Portals

As befits the moniker "City of Doors", Sigil is chock-full of Portals, and it's more than easy enough for a leatherhead to fall foul of an accidental trip to the Hells if they ain't careful. So listen up cutter, 'cos this might just save your life (at the very least, it'll stop you looking like a right berk in front of the locals).

There are no other ways in to Sigil. Magic won't get you in from the outside, as such the only way in or out is via Portal.

Finding a Portal

The first step to finding a portal, is knowing where to look; which is just about everywhere. See, any sufficiently closed aperture may constitute a portal. It could be a doorway, a window, an arch, or the opening of a yew tree.

Your faction is a good place to go if you're looking for a portal to a certain place. There's generally a ledger of sightings that they have access to, and will usually have the resources to find something out in due course.

There is another good source: Lissandra the Portal Seeker. She trades in the knowledge of portals and gates, and is said to know of a portal to just about anywhere. The trouble is, getting a hold of her... many factions would like her head and the knowledge within, so she lies low. Very low.

Types of Portal

Portals, like all things, follow the Rule of Three. That is, there are three types of Portal to know about:

  1. Permanent Portals. These serve as reliable gateways unto another plane. Both ends don't change, and the Key is a known constant. When a cutter steps through, they know just where they're going to end up.
  2. Temporary Portals. These appear and disappear at the whims of the Multiverse. They generally see only one or two uses, then vanish forever.
  3. Shifting Portals. Wicked sods. These things are unreliable in just about every sense of the word. Their destinations change. Their keys change. They appear and disappear at random. A sod could walk through a portal in the Mortuary to the Plane of Fire, then come back through and find themselves in Gehenna! Then when they panic and try to get back, they find the bloody thing's shut down and they're destined for the dead books.

And like all good rules are meant to be broken, there exists a fourth type of portal:

  1. One-way Portals. These go only one way, and allow for no return trip. They're excellent for waste disposal, or sending a sod through who you never want to see again.

Portal Keys

Getting any portal to work needs a key, which is something that must be carried through the opening. Keys can be anything, but are generally related in some manner to the source or the destination. They may even be abstract - the right words, intent, etc... E.G.

  • A sword, bathed in fresh blood (portal to Ysgard)
  • A sufficiently high blood-alcohol content (a portal found in the back door of a pub)
  • The feather of an owlbear (portal to the Beastlands)
  • A tourmaline statuette of a spider, worth at least 100gp (portal to the Demonweb Pits)

When the correct key is brought through the portal aperture, the portal springs into life - sparking up with swirling colour and transporting anyone moving through to the destination.

Portals generally stay open for around 6 seconds - though some last under a second and some stay open for a solid minute. Multiple berks can move through once activated, and the key may or may not be destroyed in the process. Portals are fickle like that.