The Void

The place one's soul is called back to, once its vessel is destroyed. The underworld. The afterlife. The infinite sleep. This place has been called many names. However, when speaking in the mortal tongue, those who design and maintain the place refer to it as The Void.
This realm is plagued by misconceptions made by those who know little more than what they've heard and read in storybooks, written by the unlearned and passed down by fools. Most mortals misconstrue The Void as the end destination of all living things. However, only a small area is dedicated to the management of souls. The rest of the realm is quite expansive, with large swathes of organized pockets inhabited by noncorporeal beings of all shapes and sizes.
The Void is the essential lynchpin of existence as we currently know it, and all other mechanisms of the universe pass through or connect to The Void. Disturbances here can be felt throughout all reality, and existence in general. The Reavers have kept the entire realm safe and stable since their kind was created, sometime after the third iteration, during the second era. (3i2e)


====== (( See also : Anatomy of a Soul ))

The Void is a complex and expansive realm containing a huge variety of races, landscapes, constructs, and machinisms. Here is an overview of certain major happenings, organizations, and locations.

Reavers - tasked with coordinating almost everything essential to the functionality of The Void. They are children born from the flesh and blood of Death herself and have near-perfect control over soul-based abilities. An entire realm of complicated infrastructure designed to support all of existence is quite a large undertaking, and the Reavers are constantly busy.

VoidSong - a paradise for the upper echelons of society. This pseudogarden is home to the souls of creatures throughout all of reality. It has exotic plants and animals. It also showcases visions of items that turned to dust long ago. Buildings are sparse here, but exquisite in scope and scale.

-The Citadel - Death resides here. The actual Goddess of Death. Some say she created mortality just to die over and over in an endless feast. This place floats in the center of the VoidSong, high above a large perfectly round hole in the ground.

Crucible of Souls - when a soul is sent to the void, it is torn to shreds by the crucible. These sheds are various parts of a soul that have changed, or improved, or degraded. It is an essential component for the process of circulating souls through the mortal realms.

Soul Forge - the Soul Forge takes the shreds created by the crucible and molds them into different combinations that result in new souls. Depending on the source souls, many may be combined to create a more powerful soul or a powerful soul can be split into multiple smaller souls.

In summation, once Death has collected the souls after dying, the Crucible of Souls is responsible for destroying a soul whilst the Soul Forge is responsible for creating new souls from those remnants, and through that process, the Soulforce capacity is increased.

Stellar Wastes - soul desert surrounding VoidSong

Rikiribbon - residential

Soul Star - where excess soul fragments are stored

+Soul fragment - an unstructured shred of Soulforce, these can be used at the soul forge to create various soul-related constructs.

Reality Gate - less of a portal and more of a . . . crossbow; one that fires bolts of solid Soulforce into the mortal realms. It is used as transport for the denizens of the realm. However, it could also devastate a select area of reality, though the feedback from this would probably only allow a shot or two to be fired before destroying the mechanism.

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Some relevant critters

Reaver - a soldier, guardian, engineer, and caretaker of the underworld. They are tasked with coordinating almost everything essential to the functionality of The Void.

Shaldoling - the general resident of the underworld, these people are a bit relatable in the sense that they have hopes and fears. They feel the push and pull to and from various events and ideologies. They work, they play, they love, they falter, they can even die. Although not through any process of death as we know it, they can be extinguished. Once, they were called shadowlings in the mortal tongue, but a drunken mispronunciation by the party god Thasinaz led to the Reavers occasionally making fun of him for it. However, they used the slang so much that people just started calling it that, and now they are Shaldolings.

Dream eaters - Their name in true speech is directly translated to "dream eater" but the concept behind the term is more actually translated as "devourer of nightmares". They get a bad rap but are very kind and concerned creatures that have tasked themselves with purging evil from the realm by feasting on bad vibes and broken thoughts. Mortals are particularly susceptible to this effect and prolonged exposure to a dream eater can cause a manic mental meltdown. At least they die smiling.

ShatterBorn - Ribbons of SoulForce vine their way up bones born from dust. The dead of the discarded roam the wastes refusing to accept their fate, clawing at, seeking out, and consuming anything that might give them even a semblance of feeling alive. The flesh, blood, mind, body, and soul of a mortal are sweet smelling to these creatures, and even already dead, stray souls will be swarmed upon and added to their ranks. They exist as bones buried deep in the coarse sand of the wastes. Dead asleep, waiting for life to disrupt their slumber, like landmines they lurk below, ready to burst to the surface and swarm at any time.

HeartBreaker - These creatures were once Fae born of Pnumesthersept. She was tinkering to create mortals with souls and went to destroy all of them once she was done with the experiment. However, she was still new to binding and unbinding SoulForce to objects and entities and accidentally created souls compatible with the functions of The Void. Since these souls were not created by The Underworld, the Crucible of Souls completely ignored them. After much time solidifying themselves, they became residents of VoidSong. Their sorrow melted away and left a hole in their hearts. They lack love and have no concept of it. By enticing mortal souls, HeartBreakers elicit strong emotions and instincts to drain and leave them as husks of themselves. Those who survive are forced to wander aimlessly, forever searching for something to search for.