As they travel through Irrisen, the party are likely to wonder where all the other portals are. This is a global phenomenon, right? Surely there should be lots of them as scattered across Irrisen. Would a journey of 132 miles not being them close to anothe at least one more?
Page 14 in the Shackled Hut describes a "pocket of summer", but then passes it off as the work of rebellious druids. Could that be recast as an undefended portal to somewhere warm? This would give the PCs a chance to feel heroic while reinforcing the impression that this threat is about more that just southern Taldor.
Great idea! I will be using this.
Assuming the portals are opening all over Golarion, there must be dozens or scores or hundreds. It's implied that Heldren and Waldsby are similar due to being on a ley line. Could assume that the portals are somehow tied to places of power. The problem with this is that Heldren and Waldsby aren't really in the same spot with relation to the portals, as far as I can tell. So, there's a hole in that thought process.
I've been thinking about this, and with all of the fey in Irrisen and to go a different direction than ley lines, which I think are a little cliches and I'm not even sure I've heard of them with regard to Golarion.
So, I'm going to say that there are naturally occurring greater fey circles tied into the First World all over Golarion. They are heavily concentrated in Irrisen, which is why Baja Yaga picked Irrisen in the first place. They are circles of different diameter and power and have natural linkages between them, which are being exploited by the white witches.
So, the two portals are in the center of two linked greater fey circles, and Heldren and Wadlsby are both on the perimeter of the circles. The similarity if the two towns is due these particular towns being influenced by a trio of norns that I'm adding to the story, one of them was slain and the other two captured by Elvanna in a bid to drain their power. The dead one was reborn in the first world, and the party met her outside of Heldren. She has yet to re-appear.
So, there are greater fey circles all over Irrisen. Some are bigger and more powerful and have more links. There are portals opening up all over Irrisen and the world. The most portals are opening in Whitethrone, where the greatest circle is located and through which the white witches draw massive amounts of power from the first world.
This is a great idea, and I need to plan to have my party encounter something like that. They have just passed the Pocket of Summer, and it wasn't very exciting.
And Arkady, can I just say that Baja Yaga is the funniest thing I've read in a while? The woman just wants to have her vacation in peace. She doesn't even like winter.
I'd just like to apologise for the appalling typos in my earlier post. Even for something posted from my phone in the middle of the night, it's embarrassing.
Can anybody think of a neat way of making it clear that this portal goes somewhere interesting, without giving the party a chance to go completely off the map?
1. Have the area around the portal "haunted" by the sounds and smells of a place?
2. Have some local wildlife or familiar objects turn up in and near the portal?
3. To really push the point you could have somebody from a PC's back story turn up, either shivering and confused or already frozen to death.
There also needs to be some sort of trial to closing the portal, not just flicking a switch. The first book is a bit shaky on exactly how you shut the portal down, it just says you need to study the writings and the big glowy globe then cast "any conjuration spell". I was thinking of reworking that into a form of sympathetic magic, familiar to anyone who's seen A Certain Magical Index or read the Dresden Files: a map of the area made out of mundane objects carefully laid out, where moving things on the map affects things on the real world. Or something.
Wildlife... like a giant squid, straight from the shackles! That could work. The smell alone would be a talking point.
I had the pocket of summer be a summer fey court attack upon the winter fey machinations and alliance with queen Elvanna. It was filled with Boggards, a phoenix (you need a firebird in a Russian fairy tale adventure path) and gorrila bears (from Monster Geographica forests). The boggards were illusioned up to look like mini Heat Misers, the swampy ground was illusioned to be just summery, and the boggards had a mini stonehenge thing they used to power up illusions to conceal their incursion and takeover of a ley line nexus as they sent out poisonous summer fey influence to try and disrupt the winter rituals.
I used the whole thing to be an intro for an amnesiac druid PC and have the party make a pact with the summer court of fey, using NWoD Changeling themes.
The idea of other portals is a good one, though they would probably be in other areas with witches where they can set up other potemkin villages to match up to the target areas.
In my game I had one of the portals lead to a grasslands area in Garund so Elvanna could fight a divine lion figure as part of her ritual requirements.
Since I only get to play with my group once every few months, I prefer to keep them on plot rather than introducing side-quests and curios. If you're able to play every week, you could expand the pocket of summer into any number of fascinating diversions.