“Magic Item, Portal Stone” is an independent product published under the Shadowdark RPG Third-Party License and is not affiliated with The Arcane Library, LLC. Shadowdark RPG © 2023 The Arcane Library, LLC.
Portal Stone
A plain, off-white oblong standing stone atop a plinth of similar stone. One side is blank, the other side is covered in Builder Glyphs.
Benefit. When used properly a doorway opens in the stone, through which you and your party walks to enter another plane or world. (See the spell Plane Shift.)
Curse. DC 10 Psyche Check to materialize at your destination without incident. On a failure consult the Portal Stone Mishap Table.
Curse. In the other world, your body may change to fit current conditions. Your old body will be returned to you, but for a few hours to days all actions will be at Disadvantage.
Curse. The roots of a Portal Stone lie deep in the earth. You cannot move it. You cannot even scratch the stone, if stone it be.
Personality. Charming. The most polite concierge you will even meet. Takes a keen interest in where travelers want to go and why, in order to learn to serve them better. Remembers you from all your last travels in the Portal Network. All Portal Daemons are really a single Portal Daemon intelligence distributed across the multiverse.
Portal Stone Activation
Contacting the Portal Daemon
Touch the Stone with your bare hand and reach out with your mind. DC 20 Psyche Check to gain the Portal Daemon’s attention. The Daemon speaks telepathically to anyone who passes the check.
Choose A Destination
Press Glyphs in a precise sequence of nine to select a destination. The Control Panel contains 59 glyphs, not including the smaller instruction glyphs around them or the plain start button at the center, and each destination requires nine glyphs to specify. More than half of those 4,559,830,787,191,680 combinations go nowhere.
Under stress, remembering the exact sequence is a DC 12 INT check.
Open the Portal
Press the blank start button at the center of the Control Panel. A black portal will open on one side of the Portal Stone. It will remain active for ten seconds after the last person enters the portal.
Someone at the portal can keep it open as long as they continue pressing the central button.
Close the Portal
Pressing the blank start button early will close the portal. If someone was halfway through the portal at the time, they will bounce to one side or another (50/50 chance), taking 1d6 damage plus any falling damage.
Read the Portal
The Portal Daemon keeps a record of the last 5d10 activations of the portal. Someone who reads Ancient Glyphs can also derive that information, with some difficulty, from the Control Panel.
Portal Stone Mishap Table
Add your Psyche Modifier to this roll.
| d12 | Result |
|---|---|
| ≤1 | You are lost between dimensions. Only the Portal Daemon can find you. |
| 2 | You appear for a 1d6 hours, then teleport randomly to another world. |
| 3 | You appear 1d6 years after you set out. |
| 4-5 | You appear 1d6 months after you set out. |
| 6-8 | You appear 1d6 days after you set out. |
| 9-12 | You appear at your destination several feet off the ground. |
| 13-15 | You appear nowhere near a Portal Stone. |
| 16-18 | You and your companions switched bodies. |
| 19 | You arrive in one piece … and so does your exact double. |
| ≥20 | You glimpse the Portal Network in all its majesty, and can choose any other destination you want. |
Exact Double. The double looks exactly like you, or with minor variations. Neither of you is more Chaotic than the other.
Switched Bodies. Swap character sheets randomly. However, you still possess the Psyche Modifier of your original character.