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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Saeviomagy" data-source="post: 392593" data-attributes="member: 5890">The people who controlled the portals would be whoever first came up with the idea (and a method) of controlling the portals. If a mage can create a teleport circle spell which is permanent, then he can also create a teleport circle which requires an oddball ritual to keep it going, then only teach the oddball ritual to his inner circle.If we're going with a network of ancient portals, then the cities may simply not be connected by road at all. The only reason the cities exist is because (after someone found the first portal) it was really really easy to create a city next to the second portal, and the third portal etc. Hell, people would probably not actually know WHERE the portals go, and therefore where all their cities actually are. They could even be on different planets or planes. Any wars would occur between groups of people on either side of certain portals. If you assume that it's ancient technology, you could even make it an impossible task to block off the portals in a fool-proof manner (so each city has an inward-facing fortification in it's centre, guarding the portal).Roads into and out of a city would still need to exist, for the same reason that we still have cars when we have aeroplanes. An aeroplane is great for long-distance mass transport. It's no good for individual short-distance travel.</blockquote>