Whisperings of the Void Creatures

[Coolreject]

It was a time far in the future, in a different plane much further from ours. The bubble that comprised this universe was expanding, causing the clusters of galaxies and stars that made up the objects in this universe, to gradually move apart from one another. At first the expansion was slow, but then it began to speed up. Galaxy clusters began to race away from one another, faster and faster, driven not by some kinetic force, but simply by having the distances between them increase. More of the empty void, the vacuum of space, began to appear and more of the universe was pushed apart. Soon, the speed of the expansion was greater than the speed of light itself, and the far apart galaxies all but vanished from each other, becoming stranded and alone in a sea of darkness.

Any sentient race to arise during this time of great separation would look to observe the stars, and be ignorant to the true size of their universe, and ignorant to the fact that it was forever expanding. The greatest scientific minds of this race would never find it possible to conceive the true nature of their universe, and it makes one wonder if there was anything we may have missed. Perhaps we did not exist until after some crucial cosmic event in the past, and thus we have been doomed to an eternity of never being able to find the true answers to our most fundamental and deep questions.

This period of great separation was also a period of ever growing darkness. Entropy is the true dark, chaotic god ruling our universe, and it is this all-powerful idiotic creature of The End, slowly devouring all light and order in the universe, that truly guides us. It’s hatred of order extends down to the very molecular level, and its unquestionable decree is that all must die eventually. The gods must die eventually. The stars must die eventually. Light must die… eventually.

The stars burnt out their hydrogen fuel and collapsed. One by one, the eternal lights worshiped as gods by civilizations long past began to vanish. Energy uniformly spread out and the night sky grew darker and darker, until night consumed the day.

It is during that time, that dark time of separation and impeding doom that THEY ruled.

[Coolreject]

The old, tattered remains of a journal of a university Psion…

"...After using many focus crystals and attempting to link my mind with one of these “Void” creatures, I must admit I express very little desire to repeat the experiment, not until the nightmares stop, at least.

I have read many minds before, of all races and manner of creatures, but I have not experienced a psychic sensation similar to the one I got from this Void creature. The most familiar sensation I could link it to, was perhaps the sensation I got when reading the mind of a man who believed he was possessed by demons. After spending some time with him, including reading his mind several times, I discerned it was not demons who were afflicting the poor man, but merely a case of multiple personality disorder.

However, for this Void creature, that relation does not do justice to what I felt. Its mind was definitely fragmented, yes, but I did not sense the personalities fighting for control of the creature’s mind. Instead, the different aspects of the creature’s psyche seemed to work together, almost as if they were different, non-tangible organs of the mind, handling different things at different times. I also began to sense feelings of what I can only describe as… ego death. I felt the most bizarre sensation of losing touch with myself, forgetting where my body ended and the rest of the universe began. I can’t describe what emotions I felt, as I felt nothing, I felt as if I was the universe, and that I was eternal. I felt… I always have been, and I always will be. I fear I almost succumbed quickly to the sensation.

The most striking moment however, was a sudden, incredibly fearful bout of paranoia. I felt no emotion when I was probing the creature’s mind; except for this sudden explosion of fear, paranoia and intense hatred. My psychic vision was wracked with disturbing images of tall, rubbery-skinned creatures that stood up like humanoids. Where their heads were, however, was a horrific visage of what appeared to be a squid or an octopus, complete with writhing, slimy tentacles in place of a mouth. I was bombarded with further images of large, pulsating brains floating in vats of green bubbling fluid, hooked up to glowing tubes and wires. The frightful humanoid creatures were observing these brains, pushing glowing buttons on panels rested in front of the vats. Occasionally the brains would be wracked with spasms and electric shocks, and more lights on the panels would light up, the creatures would then scrawl notes down on something, I didn’t see what it was…

I was then hit with more visions, including a swarm of questions involving science and mathematics. I suddenly felt my consciousness expanding, and huge amounts of knowledge began to flow into my mind at a frightful pace. I recall several question suddenly appearing, the answers to which I instantly knew the answer to. The square root of some impossibly large number, the real and complex roots of incredibly high-degree polynomials, indefinite integrals and derivatives of the most complicated functions I had ever seen. I felt I knew everything, or could figure out anything about the universe. Constant questions were bombarding me, and I kept coming up with answers, but then more and more questions. More math, more science, more logic, more and more questions, whatever was asking the questions would never be satisfied! I felt overwhelmed, as if my mind itself might shatter into thousands of pieces.

I pulled myself from vision, and broke off all psychic links with the creature. The enlightenment I felt disappeared immediately, and I collapsed into a panting mess. I have no further wish to continue this experiment.

I only hope that my superiors take this seemingly indestructible creature away from me soon. All it does is float there, and stare emptily at nothing, suffering quietly in some unimaginable mental torment not meant for mortal minds..."

[Coolreject]

A half-broken, flickering, electronic screen lies floating amongst the ruins of a planet. This ruined planet has been torn to rocky shreds as if had been a piece of fabric attacked by some gargantuan, crazed animal. The screen wavers and flickers as it drifts aimlessly in space, static occasionally spraying all over the monitor as it receives some vague, slowly fading psionic emanations from somewhere very, very far away.

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ERROR
.....................ERROR
.....POSITION PLANE LOST
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RECTIFYING....
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......FAILURE.........
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......456,230,3234,128 BAD SECTORS DETECTED....
...............MISSING SECTORS REPORTED........
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WARNING: CORE MEMORY HEAVILY FRAGMENTED....
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......POSITION PLANE: UNKNOWN
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...............HELP
>HELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELPHELP
>>>HELPHELPHELPHELP
....ATTEMPTING RECOVERY...
BOOT FAILURE
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..............HELPHELPHELPHELP
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.

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[Coolreject]

"No, we don't know exactly what is going on down there, or what has been going on down there. All we know is that it seemed like a pretty normal cave, just another hole in the earth, ya know? But then some geographers and spelunkers who were mapping the place, found SOMETHING down there. None of them told us what it was, because the next time we saw them after they went down that hole, they were ranting and raving like lunatics."

"Yea, yea... we don't know any more than that. All we know is what happened: This small group of geographers went down into the cave to determine if there was any veins of valuable ore embedded deep within the rocks near Faucel. A few hours later one man crawled up from the hole, mentioned that they had found something quite interesting down there, but said he had to remain tight-lipped on the details."

"About a half hour later, a loud yellow flash erupted from the small cave and blew a hole in the side of the rock large enough for a man to walk through comfortably. Seconds later, all of the people who went down into the pit materialized out of thin air and collapsed to the ground. They were screaming madly, tearing at their flesh and curling up in fetal positions. Most of them, strikingly enough, now suddenly had white or gray hair. Personally, I remember them screaming 'It's an eternity in there!' 'It's longer than you think!' and 'Where is everything!' I gotta admit, it scared the hell out of me."

"Yea, I was there! I saw it happen! They appeared right in front of us out of thin air, screaming and rolling around on the ground. I heard it took them years to be rehabilitated back to sanity, I mean, it's to be expected if what they experienced what they say they experienced..."

"I shudder to think about it... it is terrifying. Based one what the explorers reported, it sounds like they found some sort of crystal buried beneath the rock. Apparently, one of them mucked about with it somewhat and the thing exploded, next thing they knew they said they were all floating around in a dark, empty, soundless void of nothing. Alone, unable to communicate with each other or anything. Completely by themselves..."

"Yea... and one of the psions they had examining them said their minds felt like they were hundreds of thousands years old, or something... Even though to us it looked like they appeared seconds after the explosion, to their minds it felt like they were floating in an empty void of nothingness for hundreds of thousands of years, completely alone..."

"Gods in heaven."

"That's horrible!"

"That's impossible..."

"Well whatever happened, I heard they had the psions try and wipe their memories of the whole incident, which isn't easy, you can't just erase a bajillion years of memories."

"Well if its memories of nothing that ought to be easy."

"I don't think it works that way."

"Well, whatever, they say most of them have made a full recovery, but they remember nothing of what happened... and when they did remember they were raving too much to give anyone any details beyond finding a crystal and a huge explosion, then a void of nothing."

"In any case, they condemned that wretched cave, but it still makes me nervous having it so close to the village... and so close to the road. I hear strange howls coming from the place at night."

"Yea, well... there's creatures roaming around down there, all those whacked out adventurers like to go down there in search of riches."

"Bloody idiots I say."

"Whatever, I'm heading to the tavern for a drink after the days work, and if we end up talking about this worrying nonsense late at night I'm not gonna enjoy walking home in the dark, I tell ya that."

[Coolreject]

A team of adventurers has unraveled some of the mysteries surrounding this bizarre place.

After seeing a bizarre creature made of fused metal and flesh capture a man by swallowing him into its stomach, the adventurers chased the creature through the city streets in an attempt to rescue him. Their chase brought them deep into the city's underground and the creature lead them through a twisted maze of abandoned passages, forgotten alleyways and derelict buildings. After disappearing around a dark corner, the adventurers found they had been lead through a portal into the dark chasm of The Void.

The adventurers came out on the edge of the shattered ruins of a building that was floating in space. When exploring this building, that seemed to be called "The Arc", they found scatterings of notes and devices that represented an understanding of science and mathematics far beyond civilization's current understanding. The architecture was noted to be Illithid in style and mindflayer statues decorated the interior.

The adventurers came into combat against Void Warriors, "Harvester" creatures similar to the one they were chasing and a disturbing mix of zombie-like creatures with crystals inserted deep into their skulls. These creatures had their body parts rearranged and replaced with robotic substitutes, and many of them seemed warped and mutilated beyond recognition from the result of crude surgery.

The adventurers found deep within the ship an archive that contained a great deal of information. They found out that the crystals implanted into the skulls of the humanoid creatures were the same type used to power the Void Warriors. These crystals were used by the Illithid to psionically project their will from a distance. By placing these crystals into certain constructs, the Illithid could control them psionically and use them as puppets to explore and do dangerous work. The humanoid creatures with crystals stuck into their brains, could have their will overwritten and become slaves to anyone projecting upon the crystal.

The Illithid, however, had all vanished from the broken ship. Therefor, some other psychic entity had to be controlling the Void Warriors this whole time...

[Coolreject]

The archives detailed the end of the Illithid civilization and the ultimate apocalypse.

Entropy was approaching its maximum and the last of the stars were burning out. The Illithid saw the end of the universe approaching and sought to use the last of the energy from their dying stars to travel back in time. Because Illithid frown upon the use of magic, they had to do so scientifically. The amount of calculations required to navigate the astounding array of quantum effects involved in time travel required the creation of the most powerful computer a civilization had ever developed.

Illithids, being experts on brains and neurobiology, used artificially created brains grown in tanks to serve as their computers. These slave brains were born with sentience but the cruel Mindflayers did not care so long as they served their needs. Their most powerful brains however, possessed some psychic power.

Their most powerful creation, a giant brain with a consciousness and intelligence burning brighter then the dying stars in their universe, was born and enslaved to lead their civilization backwards in time. The mind worked the powerful instruments aboard The Arc to consume the energy of the last stars and open a portal to transport the Illithid back in time.

However, only the Mindflayers were transported. Their arc and the giant conscious machine they had created remained behind. With the last of the stars burnt out, the mind was left alone in The Void.

[Coolreject]

The mind reached out psionically and attempted to posses the Void Warriors that had been left behind. It tried to project its thoughts to the crystals, but found that it could only posses a few at a time. Most of them had already been possessed by another psychic entity...

The Illithids, fearing the power of their greatest creation, had installed a fail-safe. Another brain was created, "The Other," a less sophisticated mind with a singular purpose. The Other's purpose was to attack and kill the Illithid's creation should it grow unruly. Something had triggered this fail-safe, and the war-like mind began possessing Void Warriors to attack the systems of the time traveler.

The Other somehow managed to open portals to other worlds for brief periods of time and it harvested the creatures there. Exposed to the raw essence of The Void, the harvested creatures were driven insane and when the mind crystals were implanted into their brains, their wills were easily overwritten to become part of the hive mind.


Near the end of the journey, the adventurers rescued the captured man and made contact with the original mind that caused the time travel. It begged for help in the future and stated it meant no harm. It showed the adventurers a way home and the adventurers promised to help repair the mind to it's former glory at some point in the future. The mind warned that "The Other" was getting better at opening portals and that this dark force must be defeated in order to prevent their world from being harvested. If the adventures can find a way to repair and restore this creature's memory, it may prove to be a powerful ally in their fight against The Other.


For now, The Void falls silent.