Some minor points of mechanic or roleplay clarification.
First a new Daimon artifact appeared in Reeds.
FWIW OOCly, rediscovered item lost by a daimon, so new to you, but not new. That wasn't clear IC though, so I understand the interpretation.
Over the period of two days we hit him with multiple personal attack scrolls
To clarify some scroll usage, if someone is wounded when travelling (from say an Accident scroll), it will not stop the already-set travelling, but if someone loses their hours when travelling (from a Pain and Suffering scroll), they will have no hours to continue travelling until the next turn. This is how Jactosh kept travelling into Reeds when wounded in Zisswii and how he was captured in Reeds by overwhelming odds with no hours to travel out of the region.
opened a portal directly around him...Jactosh's Daimon guards disappeared into the portal
When eight portal stones are set in a circle, a portal does not necessarily open. It sets off a beam/column of light into the sky and an annoying humming/buzzing sound until Further GM Response (when a portal may be roleplayed opening). The black swirly bits on the map earlier in the year were actual, open portals. Most of the portal stone usages haven't necessarily opened a portal, but just caused some magical disturbance. When a portal is roleplayed opening by a GM, often it is closed in the same roleplay. BT's black-swirly portals were the exception. So Jactosh's guards were just killed by Daishi magic enhanced by an active portal stone circle, not portal disappearance.
We had people in and out of Reeds roleplaying their parts of the events. We had nobles and adventurers running around and describing what they saw...Everyone who took part and roleplayed in the event brought it to life and made it fun. AKA...congratulations to the players for helping make something amazing happen.
I strongly recommend more of this, in general, but also when using portal stones. Roleplaying your actions, motivation, scene etc. help when responding to events in addition to whatever local flavor already exists in the region description, estate names, recruitment centers, local temples, local history etc. While I would emphasize that you should expect unpredictability with portal stones in regard to your motivation, the more we can play off of what the player is doing instead of spinning something out of thin air, the better. I have been trying to involve religion in more portal events recently as well, in an 'appeal to the divine' sense. That sometimes backfires with being connected to a less benevolent divinity. Also, by continent. Generally, BT will get the most unusual, magical events. Lesser so, Dwilight. Colonies less than Dwilight. EC with the least unusual/magic events, relatively speaking, usually more along the lines of more mundane disturbances that could be explained within a medieval milieu of superstition. And to take it back to recommending more roleplay in-general - in all our busy schedules, taking time to write 2-5 sentences with an amusing twist on some regular BM event/text, can be a lot more effective than a long narrative. Some of my most fond BM memories are funny interpretations of everyday events, more than any Drama or Epic.
