The Portal in the Clearing
There’s no sign. Just the light. And the eggs.
A few nights back, I wandered north through Stillroot Hollow—not by map, but by forgetting where I was supposed to be. That’s how you find things in Loria. By losing everything else.
Up a hill, past a grove of nodding birchshrooms, I saw it.
Not hidden. Not guarded. Just there.
A black stone arch.
A glowing yellow door, liquid and perfect.
And a bench.
On the bench sat a man—if you could still call him that.
Old Nettlepin, he told me, though no one else had asked.
He wore too many coats, his teeth were few and cheerful, and his dreadlocked beard might have been older than the trees.
He offered me an egg.
“Boiled,” he said. “Perfect. You don’t have to take it. But it’s not polite to refuse.”
Behind him, a small campfire crackled. Above it, mounted like a shrine, was the most unnecessarily elegant egg-boiling mechanism I’ve ever seen. Gears, spoons, tiny tongs. Ancient, but still working. The thing boiled one egg at a time, every few hours, with precise timing and no hurry.
I asked him what the portal was.
“Forward,” he said. And then, after a moment:
“But not fast. Just instead.”
The Portal In The Clearing
Location
- A moss-ringed clearing, high on a soft forest hill
- Always night, always clear sky
- Surrounded by mushrooms and quiet trees
The Portal
- Set in a black stone arch, covered in moss and faint glyphs
- Glows bright yellow, with swirling liquid light
- No inscription, no riddle, no barrier
What It Does
- Stepping through sends the user exactly one year into the future
- Time skips for the traveler only
- The world has continued without them
- Their life has moved on—relationships, homes, jobs, obligations
- There is no going back
There’s no deception. No monster. No twist.
Just the passage of time you didn’t get to live.
Old Nettlepin
A gnarled little man, possibly ageless, possibly divine, but insists he’s just “the bench-sitter.”
Traits:
- Wears a patchwork of coats, hats, and forest detritus
- Always offers a freshly boiled egg
- His ancient egg machine is perfectly built, unnecessarily complex, and never explained
- Lives peacefully beside the portal, tends the fire, hums to the mushrooms
He does not explain the portal unless asked. Even then, he only says what’s obvious:
“Most doors open out. This one opens.. on.”
The Egg
- Given freely before anyone steps through
- Boiled to perfection—always warm, clean, and ready
- No confirmed magical effect
- May:
- Do nothing
- Be symbolic
- Mark you for something yet unseen
Some swear eating the egg brings visions. Others say refusing it invites misfortune.
Nettlepin doesn’t care either way.
He just smiles. Gaps and all.
Notes
Usable as a one-shot hook or a long-term twist. The portal works exactly as described. Its power lies in its simplicity—and the emotional consequences of skipping a year.
Old Nettlepin can serve as an odd quest giver, a local fixture, or even a hidden demigod watching over other magical anomalies in Loria.
The egg machine is intentionally overcomplicated. If studied, it appears to have components no longer made in the current age—hinting at Nettlepin’s unnatural age or origins.
The egg can be left entirely mundane or given a subtle narrative weight:
- Eating the egg might allow you to glimpse a moment from the skipped year (vision, dream, flashback).
- Refusing it might attract the attention of another traveler who did take one—and regrets it.
- The egg may simply serve as proof that you chose to go forward.
Plot Twist Variant: A PC enters the portal… and one year later, the wrong version of them returns. Or they return to a party that has moved on, replaced them, or gone mad wondering what happened.
Maybe the portal moves to other clearings, appearing across Loria (or another lovely place) every few years or so. Maybe it’s even a semi-sentient structure drawn to pivotal characters.
Want something even simpler? Just let a character skip ahead, then decide afterward what changed. It’s an invitation to reset, not rewind. :)
Everything changes in a year. Especially when you weren’t there for it.
“I didn’t step through. Not yet. But I did take the egg.
It was warm. And that was enough for now.”