Designing Void Spirits

[BronzeDog]

I've been doing some reading on spirits in CoD, and started contemplating ideas for Void spirits. There doesn't seem to be much written about them, so I thought I'd start this thread for discussing concepts. There's a particular feel I'm trying to go for: Enigmatic, subtle to the point that you can't even be sure if they're actually dangerous or just creepy and weird, and strangely intriguing. To hopefully get some ideas going, here are some "types" of Void that come to mind:

• Absence
• Blankness
• Emptiness
• Erasure
• False
• Forget
• Gone
• Hole
• Imaginary (Either not-real or as in imaginary numbers)
• Inconceivable
• Lack
• Limit
• Namelessness
• Negative
• Never
• Nobody
• Not
• Not A Number
• Nowhere
• Null
• Silence
• Stillness
• Undo
• Unmade
• Unused
• Without
• Zero

Starting with one I've been thinking about lately:

"One Who is not Here" (Absence)
It Claimed a now-forgotten soul, and lives in the world of flesh by virtue of being nearly undetectable unless it wants to make its (anti-)presence known. It does avoid areas with Forsaken, just in case. It sometimes makes deals, asking for Chiminage in forms like convincing kids to play hookey, or workers to call in sick. In exchange, it will make sure someone bound to complicate your plans won't be there to do so. Where do they end up? Is it temporary or permanent? It just grins with its otherwise blank mask of a face. In the fae-heavy city of Buena Vista, it has a tendency to attack and destroy Fetches so that people feel the absence of their abducted loved ones. Other times, it makes itself visible to spook a mortal and disappear when they try to tell a nearby person about the strange creature that was right there a second ago.

For a bit of meta, I'm tempted to give One Who is not Here a Presence score of zero.

Small bit: Bane for a Silence spirit: Naming it. "To name me is to destroy me."

[Scriptorian]

So I had an idea when I reread Conquering Heroes recently. Beasts are basically the embodied fears of humanity and originate from the edge of the Tenemos. Insatiables are similar, but instead of embodying human fears, they represent hostile primordial environments. Basically, the Insatiables are to the Animus Mundi what Beasts are to the Tenemos. Having made this connection, I asked myself, can we take this up to 11 and get a primordial monster that originates from the Sidereal Wastes? And then I laughed evilly to myself, because the answer was yes. You should now be picturing a colossal, mind-breakingly alien entity that dwells in the Void and feeds off of fear on the scale of worlds.

...greater visitors from the beyond sometimes descend — colossal leviathans of incomprehensible nature, ravenous beings of raw void...

That's from Dark Eras: Sundered Worlds (and is mentioned in the thread linked above). I know the base concept of space-cthulu-wants-to-eat-your-planet isn't unique, but I think this idea for an astral meta-origin would help to give context to what are otherwise intended to be incomprehensible horrors.

As an aside, have this head-canon that the actual reason Luna is so crazy is because she's spent eons fighting off these things.

[BronzeDog]

Started getting an idea for a group of void enthusiasts who enjoy the weird parts of mathematics, zen koans, and so forth. They call themselves the Empty Set. They wind up working with void spirits to explore various altered states of (non)being, possibly interested in some interdimensional exploration of "voidy" places like The Abyss, the Shadow reflection of outer space, or the bottom of the Ocean of Fragments. Imagine "Nowhere" would be a spirit with appropriate transportation powers. ...That reminds me: IIRC, "Utopia" means both "good place" and "no place." Food for thought.

Another Void-Claimed: Named something like "The Unencumbered," "One Who Bears Nothing," or "One Who Goes Without," representing "Without." No possessions. Ban: If someone says, "I feel naked without my ____," it must destroy that object.

[Malus]

One notion of enlightenment is the lack of need for anything. Bodhisattvas attempt to emulate this.

[Hastur00]

can we take this up to 11 and get a primordial monster that originates from the Sidereal Wastes? And then I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLlgxOo55IQ"]laughed evilly[/URL] to myself, because the answer was yes. You should now be picturing a colossal, mind-breakingly alien entity that dwells in the Void and feeds off of fear on the scale of worlds.

So would an Ultrabeast which preyed on the fears of mass or global extinction be about the right scale for a horror of that magnitude?

Come to think of it, would Extinction be an appropriate Void flavor? The absence of a species?

[BronzeDog]

So would an Ultrabeast which preyed on the fears of mass or global extinction be about the right scale for a horror of that magnitude?

Come to think of it, would Extinction be an appropriate Void flavor? The absence of a species?

Seems appropriate for Scriptorian's ideas.

Though for clarification on my void spirits, I'm keeping clear of death-related things, since those seem more like their own category.

[Hastur00]

Seems appropriate for Scriptorian's ideas.

Though for clarification on my void spirits, I'm keeping clear of death-related things, since those seem more like their own category.

I agree- I was just having a hard time thinking of world-scale catastrophies that were more than palette-swapped variations on the theme of planetary destruction.

How about Lifelessness? Not the cessation of existing life, just the absence or impossibility of existing life. It drifts through the inhospitable void, beatifically still and unaware of the paradox of its own existence, until it encounters a world inimical and inconceivable to its mindset. It then then serenely and methodically corrects the anomaly. Something with a motivation like the Auditors of Discworld, but less peevish and bloody-minded and more This Shall Not Be.

[nofather]

The Book of Spirits has Hollow Men, which are Rank 3 spirits of Oblivion.

'Many would say that these strange beings are conceptual-spirits of the bleakest, nihilistic wastelands of human thought and emotion. Some say they are representations of the capricious hand of fate. When pressed, these creatures claim to be elementals of void. Strangely, most elementals attack them on sight or flee from their presence. None will actually claim Hollow Men.'

And Sas'suga Isim, in the core book, is an idigam with Influences of Entropy, that creates 'Entropy Elementals' from existing spirits. The idigam itself is suitably nasty, of course, basically dragging at the order of the universe around it.

[Master Aquatosic]

Are Abyssal Spirits a thing? Those could be spirits of Anti-truth. And if you don't want to use the Abyss, perhaps take a page from Genius and have spirits of disproved ideologies and worldviews that try to encourage people to believe in them in spite of proof. In essence, spirits obsessed with trying to make people believe in Phrenology or the Hollow Earth (though that last one might be a real thing in the CoD). Or perhaps more general spirits that get essence from people denying anything that tries to change their pre-concieved ideas. Though that might also be more spirits of stubbornness..

Hmm, frankly, some of these might not be void enough, but I still like them.

[Vent0]

Are Abyssal Spirits a thing? Those could be spirits of Anti-truth. And if you don't want to use the Abyss, perhaps take a page from Genius and have spirits of disproved ideologies and worldviews that try to encourage people to believe in them in spite of proof. In essence, spirits obsessed with trying to make people believe in Phrenology or the Hollow Earth (though that last one might be a real thing in the CoD). Or perhaps more general spirits that get essence from people denying anything that tries to change their pre-concieved ideas. Though that might also be more spirits of stubbornness..

Hmm, frankly, some of these might not be void enough, but I still like them.

For the Spirits-of-cast-off-ideas, it might be better to go Goetics. Those might have once represented those concepts/ideas in the Temenos, but now need to trick or force others to think such things into order to get enough Essence to survive.

[Master Aquatosic]

For the Spirits-of-cast-off-ideas, it might be better to go Goetics. Those might have once represented those concepts/ideas in the Temenos, but now need to trick or force others to think such things into order to get enough Essence to survive.

Honestly, I've never really understood the difference between Goetics and conceptual spirits outside of the manifestation restrictions placed on Goetics.

[nofather]

Honestly, I've never really understood the difference between Goetics and conceptual spirits outside of the manifestation restrictions placed on Goetics.

Goetia are an individual person's memory, understanding, or concept of something, I think sometimes a group of peoples, in this, they can be skewed by perception, someone remembering their father Stabby McStabberson as a great guy because they never found out he was a slasher. Spirits are the actual reflection of it, as in born in the world, it's divorced from human perception, so that house the girl grew up in with her slasher father may have seemed nice but it's full of dark secrets, murderous intent and naivety.

[LostLight]

My view about ephemerals-

The spirit is the table, the goetia is what you think the table is, the ghost is how you remember the table and an angel is how that table could be used.

[Vent0]

Goetia are an individual person's memory, understanding, or concept of something, I think sometimes a group of peoples, in this, they can be skewed by perception, someone remembering their father Stabby McStabberson as a great guy because they never found out he was a slasher. Spirits are the actual reflection of it, as in born in the world, it's divorced from human perception, so that house the girl grew up in with her slasher father may have seemed nice but it's full of dark secrets, murderous intent and naivety.

Goetics are also about humanity's collective ideas about a subject as well.

And whatever is sourcing Goetia found in the Anima Mundi, too.

[Master Aquatosic]

Are Goetia getting less powerful as the public is becoming less homogenous in thought?

Also,even disregarding the fact that they are supposed to be natural parts of the psyche, are the emotions from Inside Out good Goetia material, more like spirits, or too complex to be either?