This was talked about in another thread months back, portals is actually a forgotten realms feature at least in 4e it was. They are scattered all over Toril and come in different sizes / shapes. Portals last longer than the creator usually and were broken back when spell plague happened. That should be reverted by now though.
In the book portals linked from one destination to another crossing areas or planes. They are not all linked and you can't tele and just magically show up to one.
I'd like to see them actually used like a actual FR feature and people have to show up to use them like its not a cheap ass wow rip off that's incredibly immersion breaking.
The example they give in FRC 4e book is more closer to this, you can see the destination through the portal and you can gain additional info via arcane roll vs a DC:
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Thanks for this informations about the lore.
I know we discussed about these runes in many threads but to be honnest I didn't really knew how it worked.
If I try to focus on mechanics, I think we should be able to fast travel from nearly everywhere like we could.
A short exemple but I have to admit that I would be annoyed if I had to walk from the grove to the closest runes to fast travel. Let's be honnest it's just a waste of time and the only consequences is that you have to walk. It's not an interresting consequences whatever we're talking about the broken rest mechanic or anything else.
It's a bit less immersion breaking but it's still not really how it should work in the FR and from a QoL point of view, it's not good at all.
That's why I really think those runes shouldn't be THE thing to fast travel.
Of course we could find some runes arround the world that could work exactly like in your summary.
I.e to go from the hag's lair to the underdark or why not from a secret room in the druid grove to the swamp...
But "common" fast travel should work like (fast) travelling and the beautifull worldmap would do the job perfectly. It's 100% ok with the lore, it's 100% ok with the immersion, it's 100% ok for our quality of life.