Codex III – Portals

Codex Entry: How to Identify and Traverse a Portal (Non-Cataclysmic Variant)

Class Requirement: Any
Backgrounds That Get Advantage: Dreamer, Archivist, Caretaker, Former Weird Kid
Alignment: Unspecified. Portals do not care about your moral spreadsheet.

Step I: Notice the Door That Refuses to Announce Itself

Portals rarely sparkle. Most appear as something you dismissed years ago: a curiosity you were told was “impractical,” a habit you outgrew under supervision, a thought you keep returning to despite yourself. If it feels small but persistent, mark it on your map. That is not noise. That is a waypoint.

Passive check: If it irritates you that it will not go away, you have probably found it.

Step II: Make the Imagination Check (No Dice Required)

Imagination is not a spell slot. It is a core stat you were born with and later pressured to dump. Reactivate it deliberately. This does not mean pretending. It means allowing yourself to consider that reality might support more than one valid route forward.

On success, you gain Expanded Perception: the ability to see options where before there were obligations.

Step III: Ignore the “Escape Hatch” Warning Label

NPCs may claim portals are avoidance mechanics. This is incorrect lore. Portals are interfaces between incompatible systems: logic and play, responsibility and wonder, survival and meaning. You are not fleeing the campaign. You are updating your movement rules.

If guilt appears, treat it as environmental damage and proceed anyway.

Step IV: Inventory Your Alternative Development Paths

Open your character sheet and note skills that were “phased out” rather than lost. Early creativity. Pattern-making. Talking to yourself. Emotional attunement. These did not disappear. They were reassigned to background processes—often anxiety.

Reclaiming them converts passive debuffs into active abilities.

Step V: Step Through Carrying What You Have

Do not wait to be lighter, purer, or less complicated. Portals are calibrated for lived-in characters. You may bring responsibilities, scars, groceries, children, grief, and a sense of humour that developed as armour. All are permitted items.

Encumbrance does not block traversal. Shame sometimes tries. Ignore it.

Step VI: Accept That the Map Is Open-World

There is no “failed main quest.” That narrative was installed to keep you moving in straight lines. Development is recursive. You will revisit old locations with better tools and recognise doors you once mistook for walls.

This grants Retcon Without Erasure: the ability to reframe past choices without deleting them.

Step VII: Log the Portal in the Codex

A portal left unused does not decay. It waits. Slightly dusty. Mildly smug. Recording it does not obligate you to act immediately; it preserves the option. The Codex is not a judge. It is an archive of doors—used, sealed, circled, and still humming quietly at the edge of your awareness.

Completion Effect

You do not exit reality. You re-enter it with additional physics enabled. Imagination ceases to be a liability and resumes its original function: navigation in a strange, branching universe.

Proceed. The campaign has always been bigger than you were told.