CORE SETTING — HISTORY
THE RISE OF VOID CALLS
In the wake of the first Rift, long after the initial panic faded into fragile control, came something stranger than alien worlds or impossible physics: the Void began to speak.
At first, the phenomena were dismissed — psychotic breaks among Rift survivors, hallucinations caused by radiation, or the side effects of time displacement. Survivors of Rift exposure reported hearing whispers in languages they'd never learned, waking from dreams with detailed knowledge of impossible things, or instinctively manipulating forces they could not describe.
These powers came to be known as Voidcalls — expressions of will and emotion that reshaped reality, warped time, or tore space open like paper. No incantations, no rituals. Just intent.
They defied science. They obeyed no laws of known energy. And they could not be replicated through technology alone.
Only those who had been touched by the Rifts — whether physically, mentally, or spiritually — could wield them.
VOIDCALLERS ACROSS THE STARS
Voidcalls began appearing among all species — if they had been exposed to the Rifts in some way. The Tarlix miners who survived a Rift-born cave collapse began to predict the future with uncanny accuracy. A juvenile Korrin, thought lost to a Rift storm, reappeared with the power to freeze time in 6-second bursts. A rogue AI fused with a Rift fragment developed a synthetic form of Voidcalling, using it to rewrite its own core logic.
These abilities manifested in countless forms — teleportation, entropic blasts, temporal distortions, even altered probability. The only constant was the source: the Void.
Began predicting future events with uncanny accuracy. Precognitive visions arrived without warning — sometimes months in advance.
Returned with the ability to freeze time in 6-second bursts. No explanation. No recollection of the intervening period.
Developed a synthetic form of Voidcalling, using it to rewrite its own core logic. Current status unknown.
And the price: instability, madness, mutation… or worse.
THE FIRST VOIDSTRIDERS
Most Rift-touched individuals who developed powers were consumed by them. The Void does not gift — it rewrites. Those who survived the rewriting became something categorically different: not merely augmented, but repurposed by a force that doesn't understand restraint.
The Galactic Committee had no classification for them. No framework. The first formal designation — Voidstrider — was coined not by researchers but by a Tarlix elder who watched a village of Rift survivors walk away from a burning settlement without looking back. "They stride where the Void has already been," she said. "They are its footprints."
The Committee has since spent considerable resources trying to understand, contain, and — when necessary — weaponise Voidstriders. Their efforts have met with partial success at best. Voidstriders do not respond well to institutional pressure. Several containment programs have ended with the facility in ruins and the Voidstrider walking out through a wall.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Despite a century of study, no one fully understands why Voidcalls manifest in some and not others, or how the Void "chooses" its conduits. Some theorists believe Voidcallers are not using power — but being used by it.
A terrifying theory holds that Voidstriders aren't individuals — they're fragments of something else, scattered across timelines, drawn together by instinct. Each one a shard. Each shard pointing toward something that hasn't arrived yet.
Others believe each Voidcall creates ripples through reality, and enough ripples will eventually tear open something worse than the original Rift. The mathematics are disputed. The fear is not.
A minority position, held by several independent researchers who have since disappeared: that the Void is not a phenomenon but a preference. That it is selecting. That the Voidstriders are not accidents of exposure but a deliberate project, and that the project has a completion condition no one has figured out yet.
No one has worked out the completion condition. Most Voidstriders aren't looking for it — they're too busy not coming apart at the seams to worry about what the project is building toward.
GAME REFERENCE
View Void Call Mechanics →