Portals Explained

"You wish to know about portals? Very well. We, the Illustrious Order of Sympanmancers, Chronomancers, Pylimancers and Metamancy, or I suppose The Illustrious Order for short, have gathered all you heroes together because there are various things which we require through the multiverses in order to continue our various experiments and other activities. It does not suit us personally to risk life and limb in the attainment of these items, and as such we have gathered you. These portals will open up to a particular place in space and time, and a small group of you, generally four individuals, may transport themselves through and into this universe.

There are some constraints, while the portal can withstand four individuals passing through it, there are times where due to the careful balancing of resonant energies we may be able to allow for more or less individuals, but if you must do some planning, I suggest planning around this number. Additionally know that each portal may only be maintained for a finite amount of time. These vary somewhat dependent upon resonant complexities and multiphasic chrono-storms, so it's best to simply ask a chronomancer before entering the portal how long they might maintain it for you.

It is significant, likely for you moreso than for us, to know that should you not be able to return to the portal, it will close without you and you will very likely be trapped for the remainder of your life in whatever dimensional hellhole we happen to have sent you to at the time. That being said, there are some options to be restored if you are trapped, and I would suggest speaking with Radovid Chief Ethikist of the Illustrious Order, as he is in charge of the process by which stranded or dead individuals might be able to be recovered.

One of the more jarring discoveries for some individuals is that we open portals to very similar seeming dimensions, this is intentional. Again due to resonant fluctuations it is useful to us to do most of our shopping, er, acquisition of new items, during the same period of time. Last week for example we had a good opportunity to open a portal to the Ancestral Plane of the Rat Ogres. While there we sent a group of skilled adventurers to recover for us the still beating heart of their Plague God, Nefandus. The first group we sent through was able to do this successfully, as was the second. And there, you see, lies the rub. We actually required several Plague Hearts for our research, and as such we opened portals to multiple dimensions and had Nefandus murdered. Er... harvested. Hrm... that's not much better. Regardless, he was killed and his heart collected multiple times.

At the end of this time, we offered to those individuals present that if they wished, there was also an alternate dimension where they could confront Nefandus after he had already reached his godhood and collected his scepter of bones. This scepter would have been very valuable to us should the adventurers who quested after it have been able to return it to us, but the risks were greatly increased. Unfortunately, they actually did not succeed and were all dissolved into paste which was used as war paint for Nefandus' Blood Legion. Unfortunate, but the good news is we had more room in the tavern and thus were able to reach out to you! So in a way their failure is your opportunity!

OOC Notes

1. Portals generally last for 30 minutes, anyone not back through them in that time is considered Dead for all intents and purposes.
2. Portals will also close if everyone inside is killed
3. Once an individual travels through a portal, they gain Portal Resonance, unless they have the Human Half-Breed power
4. It is impossible to communicate to someone on the other side of a portal
5. No more than 4 living individuals may be inside a portal at one time (unless otherwise noted)
6. There are 3 difficulties for portals, Easy, Medium and Hard. These are each exponentially more difficult than the last, and if you intend to do a portal on anything other than easy you'll need to let staff know ahead of time to prepare