The Void

    At its heart, the universe seems to be built on the incomprehensible. Through different lenses, wizards, engineers, alchemists, and scientists all struggle to understand its fundamental mysteries, but nothing exposes their ignorance more so than the Void. 
    The Void is not a plane of existence like the Material or Elemental planes; in fact, it is very much their opposite. The Void represents the space between planes, the absence of everything, containing nothing—not sound, nor space, nor time. It isn't just dark, but completely dimensionless; an infinite pinpoint adjacent to every point in reality. 
    By entering the Void and traveling through it, ships can leap vast distances in the blink of an eye. In such a process, called a Void Jump, ships are warped to an infinitesimal size for the briefest possible time, from which they can take a step in any direction and hop across the universe. Greater jumps require more energy, but allow longer steps from the Void through the 'verse; doing so, of course, is extremely perilous. 
    Paradoxically, the Void is filled with streams of hideous lights, which filter in from the most gravitationally extreme parts of all other universes and planes of existence. Because the Void has no substance and is adjacent to all possible realities, only the most energetic radiation passes into it, all of which is antithetical to living things. Any creature exposed to the Void is irrevocably changed, hideously mutated in a process called "the warp." To avoid such a fate, most pilots jump blind from behind protective blast shields, relying only on tenuous magical navigation. Even technological assists fail and are burned out in the Void; unless protected beneath a thick, metallic hull, nothing withstands its ravages for long. 
    It is exceptionally difficult to access the Void from the confines of planetary gravity, making in-atmosphere void jumps all but impossible.