On the nature of Sigillian portals

The portals of Sigil. Such a delightful mix of interversal unity that ultimately disgusts everyone as much as it fascinates them in the end. I've taken to studying these portals to allow for some musings as to what their purpose may be.To begin this essay let me introduce a fun scientific fact about the portals of Sigil: They take time. It's true, I've witnessed this myself. The importance of this may elude you, but it's a simple enough experiment if you'll indulge me for a some minutes.The receipe:- 1 hourglass with the amount of grains counted to painstaking accuracy.- 1 spell that creates some sort of seperation from your current timeline, but follows the same rules as your own time. What this spell may be called is beyond me, as I have no knowledge of these arcane matters. Consult Shimander the Striking if you have doubts as to the academic plausability of the spells' nature.- a portal to another plane, preferably a relatively safe end location.Empirical evidence:The rest is simple. Go through a portal and turn the hourglass when it enters the portal. When you step out of the portal turn the hourglass horizontally so that no sands escapes it. This will leave you with the exact amount of sands that it took to go through the portal. The result is astounding. Walking through the portal used up thirty, 30, grains! That would be the equvalent of 5 feet in the modron gait measurement system! No way walking through the portal was a distance of that length. This only means one thing; walking through portals take time.The importance of this fact may elude you for the moment, but think about the ramifications of this fact! What happens inside the portal? Some sort of traveltime, without doubt, but why have I no memory of that travel? The questions are many, and now I will shortly begin my speculations on the matter to find answers to those questions.First another facet of portals: The fact that using a sigillian portal uses strange keys to unlock is another mystery. Why is this? Why not a universal key to unlock every door? This would be a simpler and more hospitable system for sigillian travellers, and make Sigil even more of an attractive location for traders and such. Theoretical economists may disagree with me here, but studying economy is a field left for idiots with no place in the academic field.Finding these portals does provide you to be creative and use your community, however. It underlines the importance of knowledge, which is a fact that will pin my discovery with the nail of truth when this time comes.You see, these two facts put together points towards two things: The first time a portal is used by a new user he will have the memory of how he discovered the key with him. He will reflect about the situation that led him there and his thoughts will lead him to thinking about Sigil and his stay. When he then enters the portal the thought-train will come to a conclusion and then his mind will be read. Someone, I will hint at no one, uses the mind of the portal-user. Imagine the power of knowledge at your fingertips! The millions upon millions of portal-uses every day and someone reads the mind of every last one of them, bactracking their stay in Sigil that day and remembering all that information about people and their relationship. And think about it the other way as well. Entering Sigil with all that information about the myriad of planes and someone reading your mind every time. No one can ever hope or dream about controlling so much information at one time as the being that controls so much.This may be a little on the paranoid side, but give me another good answer for that timeloss, and I will revert my original statement. As the evidence seems to speak for itself however, I believe this to be a true breakthrough as to the nature of sigillian portals. To convince you further:No other interplanar portal provides this timeloss, except conduits. But with those you will at least have some memory of the trip, and their nature can be studied on the astral plane. No such reflections can be made about sigillian portals. Through this treatise I demand that the Fraternity of the Order grants me a research salary to study the deeper aspects of this topic.Yours Kajhac Kahalakk