The Smoke Clears: Behind the Screen

Ending the conversation with Veridis Mov halfway through was handy. It gave me time to write down all the things I wanted him to ask and say. 

The portal to Ranais is in a crack in the bark of Yggdrasil, but the gravity is like any other tunnel. Portal is silver with flecks of black. On the Ranais side, the portal is on the side of an ancient wall. It is formed from climbing black vines twisted into a spiral.

Ranais is dimly lit throughout. If like me you're in a country that doesn't use Fahrenheit, note that the temperature in Ranais is close to zero Celsius. The portal to Sigil lies in a massive half-sunken wall with a large circular hole in it (I was imagining the window of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris). Because the portal’s part of a trade route, there’s a mud ramp leading up to it. Portal key is a broken bone.

For the wraith attack, I just used a standard Stealth vs Passive Perception check. This had been a good time to use the 5e travelling pace rules from the PHB. I hadn't expected the wraith to do so well, but that's the fun of dice. I also had the players roll a Perception check as they traversed the open ground before the portal, and given that they'd been ambushed and seriously hurt by the last wraith, it put them somewhat on edge. I was in fact only getting them to roll to see if they noticed the portal;  but even if the rules said that the portal is automatically noticed, I'd definitely ask players to roll for Perception here again.

It was satisfying too to finally get the players back to Sigil. Given how long they've been walking the planes, there was scepticism that this would finally be the real journey home. We've all come to miss Sigil, I think. Perhaps it's some manifestation of our collective longings during this pandemic.

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