Opening a Portal in Croton

[dustole]

Aletha prepared herself for the ritual. She snuck into Croton with just herself and her servant.  She left her swordsman behind in Muspel to act as militia.

Having a portal used against her realm to summon werewolves made her search for answers and she had found them in the Volume of the Lost Island.  Some of the texts were indecipherable as the book was slightly damaged.  Other information was gleaned from her families libraries and some from her Aunt Allison's personal journals. 

She took a ceremonial dagger and sliced her wrist.  Draining her blood into a large mortar.  2 crushed portal stones were added to the mortar and ground up.  Then she added 8 quartz and crushed those.  8 rubies, 8 moonstone, 8 cracked sapphires and 8 topaz followed.  8 small diamonds and 8 other portal stones she set off to the side. She lit 8 incense.  When the other gems and portal stones and blood were ground into a paste she stripped down and covered herself in the paste.  She glittered in the candle light. 

She stuck her sword in the ground and propped the Shouting Shield against the sword making an ad hoc lectern on which she sat the book, Volume of the Lost Island, onto it so she could read from the proper pages.

With her standing in the middle 8 portal stones were set up around her one at a time as she read from the book.  As each stone was set down a small diamond was set on top of it.  As the final stones were being placed she knelt behind her makeshift lectern and took a deep breath and shouted as loud as she could through her Shouting Shield   "HAKTOO, HAKTOO, HAKTOO"  her shouts echoed much further than her voice should have been able to carry thanks to the shield. 

This was a risky gamble, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

[Ketchum]

Interesting story

[Anaris]

There's more to it now. Here, let me post the followups (all GM-sent RP Events):

Croton:

A Failed Portal

After Aletha and Edward placed the last portal stone in the circle, the eight stones shone with a spectral blue glow, and a pillar of light the same colour shot heavenward, completely engulfing Aletha. As she stood there, waiting for the portal to open and Haktoo to step forth, she felt herself growing oddly light, as if gravity within the pillar of light were gradually lessening.

As time went on, the diamonds placed on the eight portal stones began to twinkle and shine with their own inner light, purer and clearer than that emitted by the stones. Once more than two of them were lit, the light from them seemed to stretch out toward each other, creating an intricate design of connected beams of light. Soon all eight were linked by a latticework of light, with Aletha its nexus in the center.

And then she waited.

As the hours passed, she could feel the boundaries between worlds growing thinner, but it seemed like something was wrong: something more was needed, and she didn't know what it was, or even if it was something needed from her.

As the sun began to rise, she felt like something was finally happening. The light from the diamonds was gradually changing from pure white to blood red, and it seemed like the red was actually seeping from her blood in the paste on her body out along the lines of light that touched her.

The portal stones beneath her began, ever so slowly, to rotate, grinding through the surrounding earth and rock, causing the mandala of light surrounding her to spin. The speed increased, and she could see the red light from the diamonds starting to bleed into the portal stones' light. Energy started to crackle in the air around her, and she now seemed to be lifted off her feet, floating a few inches in the air with all the raw power that was being channeled through that space.

Then a hand reached out of the blackness surrounding her, and yanked her roughly out of the light, and it all came crashing down.

She shrieked in pain, confusion, and fear. Her foot struck one of the stones painfully as she was pulled from the light. The guards who had come across her scattered the diamonds, knocked over the tome, and took the sword and shield. The energy that had been all coming into a harmonious resonance shattered into crazy lightning bolts raining down from the column of light all around the hilltop, nearly killing one unfortunate guard. That spooked them enough that they did no more than bind Aletha's hands and throw a cloak around her for modesty before fleeing the hellish scene. She was so stunned from the shock of being pulled from the near-completion of the portal that she couldn't resist, and could barely stumble along fast enough that she wasn't dragged through the dirt to her prison cell.

Behind her, the column of light thinned, shuddered, and faded.

Finishing Her Work

Nearly a day later, the portal stones are still sputtering and crackling with the pent-up energy of the failed portal. They are no longer spinning, and there is no disc of light between them. Mounting the small hill the stones sit at the top of, another young woman smiles in grim triumph.

"Well," Regdalia mutters, "let's hope this works."

She carefully sets eight portal stones in a ring just outside the existing ring. She notices a couple of the diamonds are still in place, and sweeps the ground nearby until she finds the rest, replacing them gently atop the stones of the inner ring.

Nothing happens.

Frowning, Regdalia adjusts her outer ring of stones, making sure they line up just so. When the inner stones simply continue to crackle intermittently, she kicks one of the outer stones in frustration.

It strikes the inner stone it is lined up next to with a sound like a bell being rung.

In an instant, the energy from the inner stones snaps outward to engulf the outer ring, which immediately begins to spin, dragging the inner ring along with it. The book Aletha was reading from, lying forgotten within the inner ring, opens with a crack, and its pages begin to flip of their own accord. As the stones rise into the air, it rises with them. One of the stones has a streak of dark red on it, and as they spin, it begins to strip off and form a design in the air of its own accord.

"No, no no no no no..." Regdalia cries out in horror, stumbling back from the extra-wide portal that is beginning to form.

Suddenly, she is cut short and knocked off her feet by what seems like an explosion without sound as the portal opens wide even before it has turned upright. Strange, dark shapes fly forth from the portal and streak toward the north. Their destination—the spire of Nifelhold—can be clearly seen from here.

Flashes of fire erupt and distant echoes of explosions can be heard when the dark specks reach the spire. Then they come speeding back—with another figure in their claws.

Aletha is, at best, barely conscious as the winged creatures carry her back through the portal. Once she has passed through, all is quiet for several minutes.

Then Hell is unleashed upon earth.

An enormous swarm of the horrifying winged creatures bursts out of the portal and begins to fall upon the land all about. As they begin to ruin and devour everything before them, the light from the portal starts to fade. The inner ring of portal stones slows and falls to the ground, and the outer ring seems strangely unbalanced without them. Its speed rises and falls erratically, until finally, it speeds up to a blur once more for mere moments. Then the portal in the middle winks out in an instant, and all eight stones fly off in different directions, one barely missing Regdalia's head.

Nifelhold:

An Unexpected Jailbreak

Things have been quiet for some time in Nifelhold, after the excitement of the night before, with the lights in the sky. The guards are just changing shift in the prison when a servant comes running in babbling about more lights. The upcoming shift sighs that they will miss the excitement as the just-finished shift hastens out to get a better view.

The guards in the prison get a much better view of the excitement than they expected, though, as just a few minutes later the ceiling shatters above them and several strange, dark, winged shapes drop into the corridor. They are clearly intent upon a singular purpose, as they completely ignore the guards until they attempt to physically prevent the disturbing figures from reaching the cell containing the madwoman.

Within seconds, one guard's head is bitten from his body, and another is running down the corridor toward the washpits, on fire, one entire arm already burned clean off.

The remaining guards panic and flee with barely a second glance for their unfortunate brethren.

The interruption dealt with, the winged creatures turn back to the cell with Aletha in it. One breathes fire at the bars, which begin to melt and deform, and another wrenches them open. Two of them pick up her still-stunned form and carry it as they all fly back out the large hole in the ceiling and streak toward the south, where a pillar of light wreathed in black lightning stretches up to the sky.

[dustole]

Awesome RP Anaris.  I like it.  Thanks for posting it on the Forum.

[Anaris]

Awesome RP Anaris.  I like it.  Thanks for posting it on the Forum.

Glad you could read it.

[Ketchum]

Glad you could read it.

That was amazing Roleplay out there, Anaris. I wonder what or who coming through portal now.