Welcome to that Realm which is Beyond the Reality Barrier

As your consciousness returns to your still aching body you get a brief snatch of the dimensional cross-rip. You see a whirling kaleidoscope of flavours and a vague whiff of yellow. But that lasts only briefly and much too soon you are snapped back to the real world. Well, as real as a vast chunk of rock spinning slowly through a shimmering, rippling void of purple light can manage. You have passed through the Reality Barrier and arrived in The Realm.

Quite how this spinning lump of rock came to be in the space between dimensions is a mystery which is unlikely to be solved any time soon. Certainly it was already old when it was discovered and some have suggested that there are signs of previous habitation however the evidence for that is slight.

Since its discovery by a group of theoretical physicists in the late 60s The Realm has slowly built up a population of genius' and crackpots, craftsmen and wanderers, scientists and mystics. Many people escape the horrors and mundanity of the safe everyday life on Earth to live on the edge of reality where ideas flow freely and there is the suggestion of magic.

Unfortunately the finer points of this history are lost on you at the moment due to the splitting headache pounding at the inside of your skull and the distinct feeling that someone has systematically hit every nerve in your body with a welding mallet. They say the jump becomes easier every time you do it but you've seen no evidence of that.

You are standing in one of the transference receivers of the Aether port. This large complex is the only way to and from The Realm. It contains a number of similar transference receivers allowing people to travel from the "Real World" to this slightly unreal one. It also houses a couple of the gigantic, power hungry transference transmitters so you can get back again.

Startling though a technology which can cause all the atoms of a living creature to phase through the Reality Barrier is, these devices are not the most striking thing about the Aether port. Nor are they the source of its name. The port itself is built on a piece of rock which juts out from the roughly ovoid shape of the rest of the Realm. It extends this jutting rock further into the Aether with gleaming lattice work spires. Each such spire is a mooring point for Aether ships of all shapes and sizes.