Into the Ether

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued last night with the party finally getting a demonstration from Princess Viola of the projector they found several sessions ago. The projector is an etheric viewer and if left on long enough, it can open a portal into the etheric realm. Within the glowing circle of light cast by projector the party sees the guy above trying desperately to get their attention!

When they can finally talk with him, he says he is a Super-Wizard named Zuren-Ar. He claims to have rebelled against his people for their crimes--the crimes that led to their destruction--and was made a political prisoner in the Etheric Zone for his trouble. His partner was also a dissident, and she is imprisoned somewhere "even worse." That worse place is the Carnelian Hypercube, a prison in the deep either where those who offend the gods (perpetrators of "Crimes Most Cosmic") are locked up.

Zuren-Ar would be detected due to his immense super-wizardry, but he reasons the weaker PCs could slip into the prison. And he has a plan to do it.

The players were not immediately trusting of Zuren-Ar, but no one from the Princess to the Abbot of the local shrine of the Handmaiden of Knowledge had a lot of information on the Super-Wizards or the Hypercube to refute his story. Eventually, their desire for adventure and their hope for treasure carried the day. They got the Princess to blast their weapons and armor with radiation to make them ethereal-ready, and off they went.

Zuren-Ar's plan was this: He knew of a bounty hunter transport of prisoners headed for the Hybercube. The party could take them out and use the bounty hunters' credentials to get past the ten-eyed giant security guardians on the outer surface of the Hypercube.

The bounty hunters and their caged captives were on the back of a giant eel-thing. The hunters were a motley bunch of "astral mutants." The leader, Maloclus:

And his compatriots, the warrior-monk Maarta and the very excitable, necro-blast wielding Drednar:

The hunters were tough, but six on three (Zuren-Ar sat back to gauge his allies' ability) wasn't a fair fight. Their strange weapons, alas, were not particularly lootable as Maarta's sputtering energy blades required psychic training and discipline, Drednar's wailing-ghost necrogun was powered by his personal connection to the Negative Energy Realm, and Maloclus's plate armor was cursed (according to Zuren-Ar).

The party talked with the other prisoners. Only two of the three were left as a negative energy being had escape during the melee. One was a rabbit-man named Jaka Oloap from the world of Lagomorfa who claimed his crime was offending the Bright Lady (Rabbit Folk goddess of the Moon) by flying a craft to the moon and crashing the rabbit godlings' lunar revelry. The other was an elderly sadsack who said his crime was instituting "excessive bureaucracy" when he was administrator of his world. Neither of them were going to rat the PCs out to the prison guards.

The lizard man piloting the eel just wanted to get home to his latest five hundred hatchlings, so he piloted on. To the Hypercube they went...