The Wandering Portal

Where to Find It

You don't find it; it finds you. Walking the Forbidden Forest carries a small, weighted chance of the portal opening instead of the usual assortment of forest business, on the same random-encounter roll as the Forest Fool, the centaur, and everything else that lives out there pretending to be scenery.

What Happens

You step through. On the other side is a furnished room belonging to some other student entirely, described exactly as it exists: the chosen background, the exact count of decor pieces arranged in it, and the owner's name, correctly rendered, colors and all, because the room does not care that you weren't invited.

Two things happen while you're there, neither of which either of you discussed in advance:

• You pocket a small amount of gold on your way back out, for reasons neither of you will ever discuss.
• The room notes that you were there. The owner finds out later, from their own side, the next time they log in, in the form of a one-line notice and a modest sum left behind (see below), never as a debit anyone had to authorize on the spot.

A link waits by the door: "Sign their guestbook," which opens the owner's public profile in a new tab, where the room, the Like button, and the guestbook itself actually live. Nothing about the visit is written there for you; that part still requires ink.

Who Gets Picked

The portal draws from students who meet all of the following, checked at the moment it opens, not in advance:

• Their dorm's visibility is set to public (the default; an explicit opt-out in the Decorate panel removes them from the pool entirely).
• They've logged in within the last 14 days. Older than that, and the portal declines rather than dropping you into a room whose owner may not be coming back for it.
• Their account isn't locked, and it isn't you.
• They've placed at least one piece of decor. An empty room is not a destination.

Some days nobody in the whole school qualifies. When that happens the seam still opens, deposits you back in the forest a moment later, and looks faintly embarrassed about the whole thing. No reward, no visit logged, no harm done.

The Gold, Both Sides

Your own take is small and capped: a handful of gold, and only a limited number of rewarded trips per day. Past that cap the portal keeps working, the room keeps describing itself honestly, but the gold stops, on the reasonable theory that a bottomless door to free money is a design flaw rather than a feature.

The room's owner is paid separately and later, never by reaching into their pocket while they're not looking: each visit queues quietly, and the next time they log in, a bounded batch of it converts into gold with a short note about a portal guest who came and went. Visits beyond that batch simply wait for the login after that. Nobody's account is edited by anyone but its own owner, ever, which is also why the payout always arrives a beat behind the visit rather than exactly on it.

Keeping the Door Shut

Turning your dorm's visibility to private in the Decorate panel removes you from the portal's list along with the guestbook and the Like button on your profile; the same one switch governs all three. There is no separate opt-out for forest tourists specifically. If your dorm accepts visitors at all, it accepts this kind too.