Travel Pools

There are a number of dry underworld pools or stone basins, just a few inches deep and perhaps five feet across.  Each has a large symbol in the center of the basin with pairs of symbols surrounding the large central symbol, but if it is in a language no one understands it.  If one fills the basin to a depth of one inch or more with water (or some other liquid in some cases, see below) and then steps into the pool, they will find there is no bottom, and they can swim through the dark murk to another connecting pool.  When they step out, both pools will drain to nothingness and be completely dry, as if the stone absorbed the fluid.

The pools are one-way, in that nothing can step into a target pool and come out of the other side.

The basins are, in fact, portals.  The large symbol is the “name” of this basin, and the pairs of symbols are what liquid to fill the basin with and to which basin it will go.  All basins accept water to get to a location, but there may be others (wine, holy water, mead, urine, blood, etc.) that are accepted and marked on the basin.  There may even be others that are not marked (or just weren’t known!).

It takes about 12.5 gallons (50 quarts) to fill a pool to a depth of one inch.

If two basins in the underworld are filled with a liquid that doesn’t activate either then they will form a tunnel between them that can be passed one time.