From Introduction:
Not everyone can be a brave explorer, venturing into dangerous places to search for the lost gold of fallen civilizations. But many still want a taste of such adventure, to experience it vicariously, without the risk. And a few of them already have the gold they need to pay for it. The Traveller caters to those wealthy few, travelling across the many worlds of the multiverse, collecting experiences to sell for profit.
He carries a glowing tablet with him, an alien type of scrying mirror, through which he trades words with psychic middlemen and brokers of sorcery among the stars. They send requests from his clients or pass word back of new places he has found to tour. But this tablet also records everything he sees — and everything the shaggy beast he rides upon sees as well — inscribing visions upon magical crystals. These crystals can then project illusory spaces in three dimensions around them, allowing users to tour far-off locales at their leisure, and from the safety of their own abodes.
But these baubles do not come cheaply. For the Traveller is not invincible. He risks his own neck to provide these hallucinatory experiences, and he demands to be compensated appropriately. Especially when he must rely on others to keep him safe, for he is no fighter. Though his steed is mighty indeed, he sometimes relies on a bodyguard of other adventurous types to take him with them into monster-ridden caves and demon-haunted tombs. And of course, such services must be rewarded. The more dangerous and forbidding the place he is brought to, the greater the reward he has to offer.