Introduction: Portal Under the Stars Playthrough

Bert Teahill lay under a pile of threadbare blankets, shivering and groaning. He was little more than sun-shriveled skin stretched over bones, his gray hair plastered to his skull with sweat. The cramped room–barely large enough for the small bed, a footlocker, and five figures crowding round–smelled strongly of urine and death.

The old man coughed weakly. “Is everyone here then?” he asked in a voice dry as summer leaves.

“We’re all here, Bert,” sniffed Councilman Wywood, nodding. He glanced at the other three town council members, each doing their best to not be there. Wywood was the oldest and most tenured council member and often spoke first. Councilmen Wayford and Seford weren’t much younger but still deferred to him. Indeed, the three men had held their positions so long that they seemed to share more unsaid with their glances than spoken aloud. For example, right then Seford, small eyes in a round face with hanging jowls, looked to Wywood imploringly as if to say When we can leave and get back to our brandy?

The fourth council member, Councilwoman Leda Astford, was the newest member and everything the others were not. Young, brave, and earnest, she interrupted the silent glances from the other three.

“What is it you wanted to tell us, Bert? We’ve assembled the full town council and your grandson, just as you asked,” she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. Councilman Wywood, for his part, pursed his lips and sniffed derisively. The other two old men nodded at his annoyance, silently agreeing Who does she think she is, taking charge?

Bert Teahill whimpered and stirred feebly beneath his covers. For a moment he stilled, and the room grew silent. Then the old man sucked in a breath and opened his eyes wide, searching around the room. He coughed.

“Good, good. Listen to me, all of you. The star… the stars have come back as when I was a boy.”

“What are you saying, Bert?” Wywood grumbled. The man’s wrinkled face shone with sweat. “What is this about stars?”

“Let him speak, please,” Leda intoned. The other three council members traded offended, frowning glances.

“When I was a boy,” Bert continued, wheezing. “Must be fifty winters since. I used to watch the stars, notice how they formed pictures in the sky. Back then there was a particular star. Called it the Empty Star, a blue, twinkling thing, all on its own with no others around it. As it rose directly overhead, a… a door opened. Shimmering blue, at the old stone mound. Swear to all the gods I saw it! A bright blue door, and on the other side jewels and fine steel spears aplenty.”

“What is he suggesting?” Councilman Wayford scoffed at his brethren. He was stooped with age, and his voice was high and wheedling, as if he were always whining. “We’re all here for a child’s fable?”

“A portal!” Bert said, his voice suddenly strong. A liver-spotted hand emerged from the blankets and gripped Leda’s wrist. He looked up at her imploringly. “All my life I held this secret, wishing I’d gone in. Could have changed my fortune, maybe my whole family’s fortunes. Maybe the whole town’s! And every night since I’ve watched the stars. The pictures in the sky all changed. The Empty Star never came back.

“But now it’s all back, you hear me? The Empty Star is rising! Tomorrow night, sure as my grave! I feel it in my very soul, you hear me? Tomorrow night is the night! Someone has to go to the old stone mound to see the portal. Go in, this time. Change Graymoor’s fortunes! There’s treasure there, and glory. Don’t let it pass by this time, please. Don’t live a life of regret like an old, dying farmer. Please. Please…” And just as suddenly as his old, vital self had returned, Bert Teahill deflated and lay panting.

The three aged councilmen said nothing, eyes darting furtively between them in silent discussion. Leda Astford, meanwhile, patted the farmer’s shoulder gently.

“Okay, Bert,” she said. “We hear you. We’ll go to the old stone mound tomorrow night. If there’s a portal, we’ll get those jewels and spears.”

“Take– take Gyles,” Bert whispered and almost imperceptibly nodded.

With a rustle of cloth and creaking floorboards, the four town council members turned to look at the boy. Little Gyles Teahill was Bert’s grandson, who townsfolk said was strong as a man at ten years of age. He had taken over running the Teahill farm with his father’s recent leg injury. Little Gyles looked up at them all with a mix of wide-eyed surprise from the attention and an iron-like determination.

Councilman Wywood snorted derisively and turned his back on the boy. Wayford and Seford followed suit. The three shuffled out of the room, muttering about “waste of time” and “fool’s errand” and “preposterous” and “let’s go have some brandy.”

Leda Astford, meanwhile, met the boy’s eyes. She smiled, conjuring a confused grin from the boy. As the others left, Leda gently squeezed Bert’s thin shoulder and nodded. “I’ll go myself tomorrow night, Bert. And I’ll take Little Gyles and keep him safe, don’t you worry. We’ll see this door of yours. And if it’s there, well, sure as anything we’ll go in.”

Bert Teahill lay still beneath his blankets, eyes closed and barely breathing. Had the man heard her words?

They would never know.

---

Councilwoman Leda Astford’s breath steamed in the cold night air. Spring had come to Graymoor, but Winter still had its grip on the dark hours. She shivered beneath her traveling cloak, pulling it tighter. She was a healthy woman in the prime of her life but had always suffered in the cold. Her hands and feet especially.

She looked around. A rumor as big as this one had spread, and a large pack volunteered to wander into the darkness in search of Old Bert Teahill’s flight of fancy. Puffs of breath dotted the shadows as the dozen of them waited. It was a clear night and the path to the old stone mound was well-known, so none had felt the need to light a torch.

“How long are we going to stay out here before we decide the old fool is crazy?” complained Egerth Mayhurst. He was Graymoor’s jeweler, a shrewd and unpleasant man of middle years, thin and bald, with a carefully sculpted beard along his jawline. Leda assumed he was here to lay claim to any gemstones they found, if a magic portal did exist. Grimly, she realized that he may also have been sent here to report back to the other council members.

“Calm yourself, Egerth,” a deep, resonant voice intoned. It was Bern Erswood, the town’s herbalist and likely the most well-liked of the group. Bern’s remedies rarely did what he claimed, but the barrel-chested, bearded man made you feel good about taking them all the same. “That blue star that Leda called the Empty Star… It’s still climbing in the sky, and it’ll soon be directly over the old stones. I’m not saying anything will happen then, mind you, but I reckon we’ll find out soon.”

The others mumbled their assent and Egerth Mayhurst snapped his jaw shut, arms folded. Leda looked down on Little Gyles, who stood near her with a pitchfork held like he was defending a castle from invasion. The boy had stayed at her side the entire trek, and she couldn’t decide if he wanted her protection or saw himself as the protector. Either way, she smiled and gripped his firm, muscled shoulder.

“You hear that? Shouldn’t be long now,” she said reassuringly. The boy pursed his lips and nodded.

 She looked at the tall figure to her other side. Finasaer Doladris was the only elf anyone in Graymoor had ever met, and his long, pointed ears and long, fine hair made for a distinctive profile even in the darkness. His robes seemed to shimmer in the starlight.

“What do you think, Mister Doladris? Will a portal appear?”

“Mm,” he murmured noncommittally. “Difficult to ascertain, councilwoman. Yet whether folk fable or astrological miracle, it’s a fine entry to my documentation of the local populace. Quite intriguing all the same.”

Leda didn’t reply. The elf had been a genuine curiosity to all of Graymoor since he appeared out of the woodland a year ago claiming to be doing research, but the way he spoke made it difficult to hold a conversation.  

The old stone mounds were named such because, amidst a marshy woodland, several large slabs of rock lay against one another randomly like the discarded toys of giants. No other such stones could be found within miles of Graymoor, and against all reason these immense stones never collected moss, bird nests, or spiders. Indeed, no vegetation of any kind grew near the stones. Naturally, most locals avoided the place, and it was a frequent object of childhood dares. If Bert was indeed making up a story, the old stone mound was the perfect location for it.

Suddenly, where three blocks leaned haphazardly together to form an upright rectangle, a shimmering door of light appeared. One moment the space was empty and then it wasn’t, without a sound. The dozen Graymoor residents gasped. Little Gyles took an involuntary step closer to Leda.

As she moved forward, the boy at her hip, Leda saw that it was not so much a door as the opening of a corridor. Where before there had been a person-sized gap, there now stretched a long hallway, limned by blue light.

“There’s nothing on the other side!” Veric Cayfield, one of the three halflings present, called out from the shadows. Like the Haffoot siblings who had also joined their party, Veric had migrated to Graymoor from the distant halfling village of Teatown. He had become the town’s haberdasher years ago, because there was nothing Veric loved so much as clothes and sewing. Indeed, he proudly exclaimed to anyone who would listen that the reason he loved Graymoor is because humans allow him the opportunity to use even more fabric for his craft. Leda had no idea why he’d joined their expedition tonight. Or the Haffoots, for that matter.

A handful of others had wandered to the other side of the three stones.

“Sure enough!” Bern the herbalist exclaimed. “I can see you all clearly through the gap on this side. Can you see me?”

“We can’t, Bern,” Leda called out. “For us it’s a hallway.”

The sound of a sword being pulled from its scabbard rang out. Mythey Wyebury, who Leda always thought was trouble, moved forward to the shimmering corridor’s opening. “Well?” he said. “So the old man was speaking true. Let’s go find these jewels and magical weapons, eh?”

And then he stepped into the portal.

Hesitantly, a small group followed, each clutching the closest thing to a weapon they could find at home. Umur Pearlhammer, the dwarven stonesmith and Graymoor’s most tenured resident, gripped a hammer. Erin Wywood, the councilman’s granddaughter, had a long knife in her shaking hand. Even Hilda Breadon, the town’s baker extraordinaire, gripped a rolling pin in her meaty fist.

“Do we go in now?” Little Gyles asked, looking up at her. For such a strapping lad, his voice betrayed his young age.

“I suppose we do,” Leda answered with wonder, and the two moved towards the opening.

The corridor before them ran about twenty feet, and she was surprised to find that a flagstone floor ran between the portal opening and a large door. Otherwise, the place was bare walls, the same sort of stone as the old stone mound. But it was the flagstones that unnerved her most, for it spoke of someone crafting this place instead of it simply… being.

Mythey and several others were already at the door.

“Locked!” he shouted back at them, clearly frustrated. Veric, Bern, and the others who had walked around the stones were now all at the portal’s entrance behind Leda, peering in.

Leda strode closer, and the door itself left no question as to someone crafting this place. It was wooden and iron-banded. Jewels or crystals of some sort were embedded in the wood, creating star-shapes that twinkled in the blue light.

“I think,” Erin Wywood started to say, her voice cracking. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I think we need to wait. Bern said the star wasn’t directly overhead yet, yeah?”

Leda blinked, surprised. She knew Erin to be the closest thing Graymoor had to a minstrel, always in public spaces or the tavern singing songs about the gods and the importance of rooting out Chaos from the world. She never thought of her as quick-witted. Leda was suddenly glad that the councilman’s granddaughter had joined them.

“Screw that!” Mythey spat from the front of the group. Before anyone could stop him, he put his hand on the door’s handle and bashed forward with his shoulder. Mythey was an ass and bully, but he was also a hulking man and perhaps the strongest of them assembled.

It was a solid blow, but the sturdy door held. As the man struck it, the jewels on its surface flashed a bright blue that left all of them within the corridor dazzled. Leda blinked to regain her vision, and as she did so, those nearest the door cried out.

“He’s dead!” Hilda the baker shrieked. “Burned to a crisp! Gods help us!”

Acrid smoke smelling of charred flesh began drifting through the corridor towards the open air. Leda gagged and rushed towards the exit along with the others. She glanced back and saw the blackened lump that was once Mythey Wybury.

As the now-eleven of them huddled outside, under the night sky, near the shimmering portal entrance, several people tried talking at once, some in hysterical, high-pitched tones and others in calm, reassuring ones. The effect was that no one heard a single thing the others were saying, leading to a chaotic babble.

“Enough!” Umur Pearlhammer shouted. At once they all quieted. The dwarf’s weathered face, bushy brows over a bulbous nose, regarded them. “Mythey was a fool and trouble besides, we all knew it. First chance he had to take whatever wealth and steal it, he would have. I donna’ like that he died, mind, but there’s a lesson there for all’a us.”

The others nodded and sniffled and gripped their weapons.

“We gotta take care, now,” the dwarf continued in his gruff, commanding voice. “Think an’ act together, yeah? Miss Wywood has the right of it, methinks. What say you, Bern? The Empty Star still tracking overhead?”

The herbalist scanned the sky. “I would say so, yes. Maybe an hour or two and it should be directly overhead.”

Umur nodded once. “Then we wait. Meantime, who can help me haul that fool’s body out so we can bring it back when we’re done?”

For a moment, no one said a word. Then, at Leda’s side, Little Gyles Teahill raised his hand. “I can help, master stonemason sir.”

Umur nodded again. “Right enough. Come along lad.”

The next hour or two passed slowly. Mythey’s body was badly burned and uncomfortable to see, like he’d been struck by lightning. But he had a short sword in his grip and was the only one of them wearing anything resembling armor. After the trapped door, such things seemed more important than ever. Umur offered to take the sword, since no one else seemed comfortable using it. The leather cuirass, however, would never have fit the stocky dwarf. Indeed, only Bern the herbalist, Egerth the jeweler, and Finasaer the researcher were anywhere near the man’s size. The elf held up his hands helplessly, saying he was not a man of arms. That left the two human men, and, after some discussion, Bern had the least distaste for wearing a dead man’s singed leathers. With the help of the others, they pulled the items from Mythey’s corpse and helped Bern with the straps. Umur swung the sword, away from the group, and grunted in satisfaction as he slid it back into the scabbard that now hung from his hip.

“Something’s happening!” one of the Haffoots, the sister, Ethys, exclaimed, pointing a small finger towards the glowing hallway.

Bern looked skyward, drumming a finger on his now leather-clad belly. “Mm. Looks like it’s directly overhead, sure enough.”

“What is it, Ethys?” Leda asked as the group edged near the stones. It was an unnecessary question. Anyone with a view down the long corridor could see what was happening.

The jewel-encrusted, heavy door had swung open.