Nota Bene: This essay is NOT intended for those who have never read an “Axeman Portal” story, as it includes spoilers. It is intended as a reference for those who had questions after (or even while) reading one, as well as for those who are thinking about writing and posting their own “Portal” story and who want to make sure that what they write follows all the details given in previous stories.

The “Portal” Universe

Science Fiction (and fantasy, too) has long had the “magic door” concept. Sometimes it’s a magic spell that a wizard incants to allow him to take three steps and suddenly be in the Imperial Capital or in his secret mountain laboratory. Sometimes it’s a side-effect of high-density magnetic fields interacting and opening a door which can be steered to the next room, a space-station, or the next star system. It’s an old idea.

One of Storiesonline.net’s most popular shared story universes, Damsels in Distress, has portals that will allow the right sort of people to step from planet to planet as a key enabling concept. Those stories are about a series of Heros who use portals to leave Earth, go somewhere else to prepare, and then go to a third place to have adventures before going back to the base to recover and then return to Earth.

In 2020, Shaddoth became active again on Storiesonline.net after some time away, giving us some old stories ported over from other sites as well as some new work. One of his new stories was “Axeman”, about someone who was given the ability to enter “portals”, fight monsters, and gain riches. Such people are known as ‘Weapons’ after the weapons that the System grants them. His story about the “Black Axe” was hugely successful, with over a quarter-million accesses and a reader-voted quality score of 8.8 on SOL’s logarithmic 0-10 scale.

It wasn’t his treatment of the portals and their contents that made the story such a success, it was how the rest of the main character’s world was described. This wasn’t just a ‘dungeon dive’ story, it was a whole rich world to explore, that happened to have these portals as the MC’s (dangerous) hobby.

Unfortunately, the writer is getting on in years with both medical and economic issues, and while in 2023 he posted that “A2” was in progress, today (in mid-2025) he hasn’t even responded to email for two years. In fact, I just noticed today that he has disabled the email option on his SOL home page. If it was ever there in the first place, I mean. So, we have to accept that we may not ever see A2.

However, the universe he shared with us is so rich that other writers have started to add their own stories. Shaddoth gave us the original in 2020, about a Hero in Chicago who dedicated his life to helping Weapons grow strong enough to someday take on the Boss Monster at the end. His Hero is college-educated and a strong believer in law, order, taking responsibility, doing the right thing, and personal freedom.

The next year, Morningfrost gave us three chapters of “The Warhammer”, about a team in central Florida, before stopping. I’ve been told that this was his first attempt at writing, and some internet trolls gave him enough trouble that he quit. That’s a shame, since that story was a good followup to Axeman.

James Girvan, on the other hand, has given us a whole series of stories from the other end of society. His characters are mostly members of the “Beer League”, an informal group of Weapons who work as car mechanics, waitresses, and janitors in eastern Canada. They used to go bowling on Saturday nights, but these new Portals are a lot more fun than bowling ever was.

Only, you don’t usually get half your teammates killed when you screw up in bowling. Some Weapons learn, some don’t. Some of them take the Portals seriously and end up joining serious teams. Others don’t want to leave their current lifestyles, and only go into the easier Portals. Eventually, all the ‘Divers’ who get drunk before entering the portals, well, one way or another they stop being problems for their teammates.

The only significant differences between JG’s “beer league” stories and Shaddoth’s “Axeman” are that JG has you start at “Level 0” instead of “Level 1”, and he introduces a less-deadly ‘training’ set of Pink portals.

I sure hope that other writers add to this ‘universe’. The stories we’ve got so far are a lot of fun to read, and more could only be better.

(Me? I’ve got enough on my plate that you probably won’t ever see a Portal story from me. I like puzzles, though, and figuring out how things work, so I can donate this essay on how the Portal Universe does things. -ZM)

The Portals themselves come in several different colors. Shaddoth gave us Violet, Indigo, Blue, and Green, all distributed randomly all over the world, or maybe according to rules we don’t understand yet. That listed order is in danger level.

The first level of a Violet isn’t too dangerous, three or four high school students with Weapons can probably get through it. The first level of an Indigo is roughly the same amount of deadly as the third level of a Violet. Any level of a Blue is more dangerous than the same level of a Violet, and a Green is more deadly yet.

For each portal, a party entering it for the first time will go down a stone stairway (quote: “a dimly lit ... two by three meters ... stone staircase”) with one hundred steps and enter “Level One”. There will be opponents of some kind which must be defeated (read: killed) before the exit stairway becomes accessible. While placement is random, the next party entering that portal will find the same sort of opponent in roughly the same number. Usually, there is a ‘Boss’ of some sort, either accompanying the regular opponents or staying near the exit.

Any party entering the same portal a second time will find the same type of opponent as their first dive, but the numbers have increased significantly. Maybe a quarter more, maybe twice as many. Each dive, up to five trips, will simply increase the number of opponents. At the end of each dive, the party has a choice between going up the exit stairway and going home, or going down the stairway right beside it and taking on the next deeper level.

If a party chooses to enter the same portal for a sixth time, they no longer get to (‘have to’?) fight through Level One. They are automatically dumped at the entrance to Level Two. The same thing happens if a party ever chooses the down stairs at the end of a level. Once you have visited a particular level, you can no longer visit any ‘easier’ levels of that portal. You can still go do Level One of a different Portal, of course, of the same color or a different one.

The next level down will have the same type(s) of opponents, but will add another element of danger. Maybe it has a new, stronger super-boss. Maybe you start in a warehouse that is on fire and about to collapse so you have to get out immediately. Maybe the ship is sinking so you don’t have much time to reach the exit compartment before it floods and the exit portal no longer works.

Anyone familiar with the visible light spectrum -or has even just ever seen a rainbow- recognizes the color order. It is expected that, once the Weapons start getting the Greens under control, the System that controls the Portals will start placing Yellows, then Oranges, and eventually Reds.

Each color portal will feature a new type of danger. Sure, if your team laughs at Green Level Five, you should try a new Yellow we just found. If, however, your team struggles to get through an Indigo One, you should NOT try any of the harder colors.

Oh, yeah. There is also a single Black portal known, on the roof of the Chicago City Hall building. It’s probably the ‘final battle’ Portal. Certainly, no one who has ever entered it has come out again.

Is this the only Black portal we will ever see? We don’t know. It showed up in the Black Axe’s home town immediately after he reached a significant ability milestone. Maybe it is the portal he and his team are supposed to go through last, to ‘win the game’. Maybe it just means “some local just reached X”, and every city in the world will get their own Black portal as soon as the local hero gets to that milestone. We don’t know. Maybe someone will write enough stories about their Weapon that he (or she, we’re not sexist here) reaches the same milestone, and we’ll find out then.

James Girvan has also described some portals at the ‘easy’ end, the Pink portals. These have “normal” predatory animals, like giant crabs, giant scorpion crabs, and giant rats (often referred to as “rodents of unusual size”, of course). No, they aren’t as deadly as Mounted Skeletal Knights, Undead Ghoul Lords, or Fire-Spitting King Ants, but they will still kill the unprepared.

The “Weapons”

The “Portal” Universe was just like ours, only five years in the future (Axeman was published in 2020 and had a wealthy teenager with a 2026 luxury car). Or, it was just like ours until one morning (*) when millions of people around the world woke up to find a melee-range medieval-era weapon hanging in the air above them. Swords, staves, spears, Gladius from ancient Rome, a Wakazashi or a Sai from Japan. There are very few ranged weapons granted, apparently. All of the affected were from 15 to 30 years old.

Each weapon disappeared as soon as they were touched. Unfortunately, as weapons tend to be, many of them were sharp and many of the intended users touched them in ways that got them cut. Also, oddly, any previous injury which had not healed perfectly acted up, but each person healed slowly over the next several weeks until they were at perfect health and performance.

(Differences: Warhammer has all Weapons restored to full health by the next day after the initial appearance of their weapon.)

(* The date is never given, but we are told that something else happened ‘five months later’ on March 1st, so we can count backwards and assume that this happened on October 1st.)

Six days later (Warhammer says it was on a Monday), amid other physics-defying events, many purple “Portals” appeared. The ‘System’ which managed them called them ‘Gates’, but Earth stayed with ‘Portals’. The people who had been ‘granted’ weapons -before long the people themselves were called ‘Weapons’- could enter the portals and be transported to ‘Dungeon World’. After they had completed whatever tasks were required for that ‘Level’ (if they survived), they could exit them again.

To anyone else including animals, plants, and nonliving materials, the Portals simply did not exist. “Norms” or normal people could walk through them and continue on their business without any effects at all.

They were almost all in urban areas. The only rule about where these Portals could be appeared to be a requirement that they be floating above poured concrete. Some were floating above sidewalks where pedestrians could simply walk through them. Some were even in roads where they had no effect on cars and trucks.

Only weapons provided by the ‘System’, whatever it was that was managing this show, could be used inside the Portals. Not even a handmade knife was allowed. No shields were allowed, either, unless the System had granted them. Shields that the holder had acquired on their own were left behind when the Weapon entered the Portal. However, non-weapon support items such as tents, clothes, food, and water were allowed.