The portal of Domus

Here are the events known about the Portal in Domus as collected from various sources :

A New Portal ~ A Black Night (2 days, 10 hours ago) Message to everyone in the vicinity of Domus For a night and a day, the portal stones sit in the dark alley where they were first placed. They occasionally emit another burst of light toward the sky, disturbing the locals and causing general unease. A few people get up the courage to go down the alley and try to pick them up, but they cannot be budged the merest hair's-breadth. Then, as the sun sets on the second day, they flash with sudden energy and leap into the sky, swirling around faster and faster as they rise. After just a minute or two, the space in the middle of the stones darkens and begins to pulse with crackling energy.

From out of that darkness rolls a black fog. At first glance it looks like smoke from the burning of hundreds of fires, but it has neither heat nor odor to it. It is like shadow itself took physical form—diffuse, nebulous, obscuring, but not actually blocking all sight.

This black mist spreads out across the city from where the portal now hangs above it, cloaking it in a deeper darkness even as night falls over the land.

The Darkness Writhes (2 days, 6 hours ago) Message to everyone in the vicinity of Domus Some hours after the black fog began to pour forth from the portal, it seems to grow strangely thicker, though not uniformly so. It is as if tendrils of inky blackness have begun to writhe through the shadowy fog. Everywhere they touch, light seems to fail altogether.

They are spreading.

The Veil Is Lifted (2 days, 5 hours ago) Message to everyone in the vicinity of Domus Some time after the tendrils of utter blackness began snaking through the fog, they change their behaviour. Rather than pushing forward, ever outward from where the portal hangs, high above Domus, they begin pulling back toward it. They also seem to be pulling the fog back with them.

As they pull back, and the full moon shines clearly once more down to the streets of Domus, shouts and cries of surprise begin to rise from the city as people see what was concealed within that black fog.

Soon, there are people clogging every street and alley. The gates of the palace are mobbed by peasants demanding to be let in, and the city's parks and gardens are being trampled and uprooted by people in a frenzy. As the last tendrils of darkness pull back through the portal, and the portal stones fall to the ground, spent, there is even an organized group of peasants with pitchforks, scythes, and torches storming around.

All of them are trying to collect as many as they can of the gold nuggets that litter the ground where the black fog passed.