Like the humours spilled by a sleeping sickness, the Void was born of the nightmares of Temulea after he discovered the creation of the Daegir. It was made of the same creative impulse that had formed Avadnu, now warped by anger, ego, and frustration. Its residents were the voidspawn⎯agonized beings who understood nothing besides their pain, who wished to make Avadnu reflect themselves.

For a time, this act of spite salved Temulea’s wounds. Eventually, however, his despair came to echo his rage, and he drew upon his memories of the universe’s beginning to create reality’s antithesis. The xxyth rose as the new masters of the Void, beings of unmaking fueled by hate. Unlike the voidspawn, they were not a twisted reflection of the world, but something entirely new and incompatible. What they do share with the voidspawn is their desire to escape, to reach Avadnu and fulfill their purpose.

The Void is an endless, rough plain of gray stone. The sky is made of glowing swirls of purple and green, and screeching winds come and pass swiftly. Strangers in the Void experience both physical and spiritual vertigo, feeling the world move around them and the beliefs which drive them become difficult to conceptualize. All dreams in the Void reflect Temulea’s, so few visitors can ever rest.

Most voidspawn not enslaved by the xxyth or their peers wander the plains at random, searching for life to destroy or corrupt. Occasionally, voidspawn build nests or palaces in which to reside; void spiders make “forests” of pillars from their secretions and victims, and coran’tul construct fortresses of fire and raw magic. Despite the Void’s infinite expanse, struggles for territory between voidspawn are frequent. This is particularly true around “dream seeds,” rare and hidden pockets of the Void where Temulea’s dreams escaped anger. Dream seeds can take any form, reflecting Temulea’s love of mistji lands or suppressed concepts for a world more perfect than Avadnu. Many times, the denizens of the Void believed they destroyed or corrupted the last dream seed, yet another invariably is discovered.

Unlike the voidspawn, the xxyth lack a creative impulse. The less powerful xxyth roam the Void in throngs, reducing everything they find to waste. The arch-xxyth and the mysterious xxyth lords act in more subtle ways, however. Some reside in enormous black spires which emerge from the air to plunge into both earth and sky, like nails pounding into glass. The spires are all inherently flawed, and inevitably shatter, but act as weapons which tear apart existence while they last. One of the greatest [xxyth]] lords rules a fortress reachable only by accepting a mindset of constant descent, even when it sits atop a mountain. The fortress is a black gap in reality, shaped like an impression of the ancient sulwynarii city of Inil Halifal. It was formed by the lord’s memory of the city from its brief life on Avadnu, and its inability to conceive of the city as a place deserving of existence. Voidspawn occasionally enter the city, but any matter not of the Void brought within begins to be consumed by the Void’s elements⎯bursting into blue flame, dissolving into black, acidic ichor, cracking and turning to dust, or withering in the air.

The scholar Zhavad Auoum is one of the few mortals to have written about the Void. In an uncharacteristically personal section of the third volume of his treatise he writes, “When my scrying was complete, and I returned to my study, I fell back in my chair and wept. Not out of fear for what I had seen, or sorrow for the world, but for the despair I felt at the knowledge that such a thing exists. That the Void can exist within our world brings into question all that is beautiful and pure. If the universe can sustain the Void, can there be beauty or purity? Can there be goodness, or hope? Or have we fooled ourselves by assuming that the limits of our conceptions were limits the universe shared?”

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