Footenotes: An Introduction to the Void

Ok folks. It's been a long while since I've had the material to warrent a new addition to my Footenotes series. While we are a long ways away from having more solid material to work off of, the recent revelations in the OblivAeon kickstarter gave a ton of really juicy information.

Lets talk about The Void.

At the very begining of all things, there was The Wager. The Wager that nothing would happen (see Wager Master bio). The interesting thing to take away here is that there were sentient beings around in this vast nothingness to make this wager in the first place, so something must have existed before all existence was, well, brought into existence (geez, did I really just type that?). What is this thing that existed? The Void. Primal temporal energies. And there must be beings that existed and harnessed that power, those being ones that made The Wager.

Moving on, we all know that The Wager was lost as time/space reformed into existence. As we know from Wager Master's bio, he was the product of the sum total of all "Impossible Possibilities" that arose out of existence being created. As I have speculated in my previous Footenotes, the flip side to that coin is that the sum total of all of the "Possible Possibilities" produced that Multiverse as we know it.

Lets take a few steps back in time for a moment:

In Sentinel Tactics, the main plot arc seems to start when a newfound powersource is identified and there are more than a few folks that are very motivated to get their hands on it. We are shown that Citizen Dawn and RevoCorp are both battling to get their hands on this source of power. The Oblivion Shards.

In the new OblivAeon kickstarter, we are introduced to the highly anticipated Ft Adamant complex environment. Here is what we know about Ft. Adamant from all the information we have so far: Ft. Adamant is controlled by the US military. They have a secret instilation where they have a "hero training" program, as we see the Southwest Sentinels get recruited for. They also have a prison and run secret testing on subjects like Choke for undisclosed, but not doubt nefarious, reasons. As we see in the ARG comic for Ft. Adamant, we see a rather disturbing revelation that Ft Adamant and te US Military have a working relationship and corrospondence with FILTER. And we now know that Adamant houses objects of incredible power such as Deadline's power crystal from the Enclave of Endlings as well as a handful of Oblivion Shards.

When Chokepoint enters Ft Adamant, a battle starts between her and our Southwest Sentinels where they are completley outmatched. The disturbing thing here is that in the Ft Adamant environment bio, it states that no alarms were sounded even though her entry was completly "un-stealthy". This seems odd (this is a plot point to keep an eye on, but at least at the moment it is slightly out of the scope for this discussion. Worth mentioning in passing however). During the battle, the Sentinels discover a secret room containing the Oblivion Shards. They each take one, enabling them to weild the incredible power the stones possess. As the Kickstarter has shown us, with this newfound power, they become a team called "The Void Guard". This name is pretty important because it shows a direct link between the Oblivion Shards, the power they have, and The Void.

Where did Ft. Adamant get these Shards from and how did they even find them? Remember I said that Ft. Adamant has obvious connections to FILTER? Well, FILTER, as we know from KNYFE's bios as well as the Block, has access to and has seen many alternate timelines and universes. They have the technology to create The Block, a prision that is outside both time and space. Where did that tech even come from? KNYFE knew that FILTER knows a lot more than they were letting on which is why she left. It seems possible, maybe even highly probable, that FILTER with all of their incredible technology and access to all places inside and outside the space/time of the multiverse knows about the Void, what it is, and the power within it.

Allow me to draw your attention to a card that I have always found incredibly odd and suspicious. "FILTER Agent" from the Time Cataclysm deck. Now, why would he be in such a deck (besides the mechanical purpose of having a Block representitive), and why would his flavor text say he needs to "collect specimens"? What the hell does FILTER, an interdimensional prison running organization, want with specimens? Specimens of what? This question bugged me to no end for years on these forums. But then the Kickstarter introduced another Environment. The Nexus of the Void. Maybe, just maybe, FILTER has known about this mysterious place for a while and been doing research on the island and its inhabitants to study what the Void is. If this is true, then it seems that FILTER might have found these Oblivion Shards on that island and sent them to their friends at Ft Adamant for further testing.

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There are a few other notable instances that we need to talk about.

Akash T and her hero deck. We have not seen the deck yet, but we have seen and read about her her promo. She goes to the Void Nexus in search of more power and she gets it. Infused with the this power of the Void, she starts to sport a hole or a spot on her chest. Her promo bio states that when you take of this power, it will take back.

That in and of itself didn't seem very enlightening. But then we were introduced to LaCommadora and her promo Curse of the Black Spot. The base Commadora speak about her almost not surviving the "temporal" energies of the Black Spot that was seeking to take something back from her. She wears a "timelocked suit" in order to keep these temporal energies from taking anything further. Her Black Spot promo shows her with this hole in her chest. And what is really interesting about it is that it looks pretty much identical to the hole in the chest of Akash T after she takes power from the Void. I don't think there is a coincidence here folks. There was something about being outside of Time for so long that the Void obviously did not like. The power it gave her (and probably gave her boat), it was seeking payment in return that might have cost her her life, or maybe worse.

Another major point that we need to bring up here is the "Scholar of the Infinite" promo. The bio for his promo specifically says that Scholar has become a gateway between here and the infinite void. Now that is interesting isn't it? We see Scholar on the incap side dissapearing and fading away slowly, almost like he is fading away from time itself, like the temporal energies of the Void is "taking something back". Scholar had to weild a massive amount of Void power I'd assume to become a selfmade gateway between our reality and the Void. Could Scholar also have this Black Spot and we can't see it under his clothes? And probably more importantly, if Scholar is weilding Void energies to that level, could this mean that his Stone is actually an Oblivion Shard itself?

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There is a hole (no pun intended) that I can't seem to fill just yet. That hole specifically is Argent Adept. The Virtuoso of the Void. We know that there have been many Adepts over the years and they are all able to somewhat share knowledge and power through the ages through the use of the instruments that they specialized in, allowing future Adepts to collect those instruments and gaining power of previous Adepts. How Argent Adept is connected to the Void is largely a mystery. But the name strikes as a hard indication that there is a connection to be made. Is the Adept an agent of the Void? A musician to the backdrop of silence and darkness? Or is the Virtuoso a combatant of the Void, anethema to that silence and darkness with his sound? He wields no Oblivion Shard and his intruments are not items of power in and of themselves. Maybe the clue to unlocking this mystery is within the Adepts timeless battle against the elemental Akash Butah. Consider some text from his bio for a moment:

As long as human cultures have existed, there has always been a Virtuoso of the Void. A master musician who holds back the tide of chaos and destruction through their connection to the primal forces of the natural world. There is only ever one Virtuoso of the Void at a time, and each of these druidic songsmiths faced down the avatar of annihilation known as Akash’bhuta as she rose time and time again to break all order in the world.

Primal Forces of the natural world. Could that be a hidden reference to the energies of the Void? Remember at the begining of these piece I talked about The Wager and what likely had to exisit before the Wager was made and lost. The Void, original and primal energy. In my previous Footenotes series, I talked a lot about the concept of Chaos vs Order and how it might have something to do with the Wager and our Cosmic Entity OblivAeon.

Whoever made that initial Wager thought that "nothing would happen", that "Order" would hold and continue on undisturbed. But it didnt. Something did happened and the "Chaotic" nature of all creation took palce.

Akash Butah is the physical embodiment of the very nature of Chaos on Earth being equal parts creation and destruction. 

In the earliest records of civilization, there has always been mention of a champion of order who fights against the destructive ways of Akash'bhuta

So Argent Adept is a "champion of Order" to Akah's embodiment of Chaos. If we extrapolate that out a bit, The Void before The Wager was also the embodiment of Order in a way. Looking at it through this lens, Argent Adept being an agent of the Void could make sense.

If we choose to go down this theory road, we have to look at OblivAeon and his agenda of ending all the "chaos" of the multiverse as being part and parcel to this entire idea. OblivAeon likely existed before The Wager, and if my previous theories are at all correct, than OblivAeon was an active participant in The Wager itself. However, I'd like to revise part of this theory from my previous Footenote (which you all must have gone back to read since I have brought it up on multiple occasions now right?). I don't think OblivAeon represents chaos and I don't think he won that bet. I now think that he was the one to loose The Wager. Given that his goal is to combine the entire Multiverese (which was a result of that lost wager) down to a singularity in order to destroy it all would mean a return to the vast nothingness of only the Void, I doubt he would want to destroy something which he foresaw in the first place. It seems more likely that he is still pretty sore that he was wrong in the first place and that he has had enough of this game life and would like to put an end to it before the beings in the multiverese get too strong, seeing as they are already tampering with powers and energies they dont understand from the Void and Oblivion Shards.

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Thanks for reading another installment of Footenotes. Please check out my other entires into the series if you are new around here because there are a lot of really great discussions that take place in the comments that are worth reading for any of you interesting in theories and stories (though there are some that might be considered outdated by this point, like my entry on Mainstay).

We are just getting started on this topic since the OblivAeon expansion is still fairly far away from being in our hands. I am 100% possitive there will be a metric butt ton of art and flavor text that will speak directly to the topics above. It's an exciting time to be here for the end of the Multiverse.

Always a good read.  Hopefully by the time OblivAeon is released we can get some answers but I feel we will be left with more questions again.  

I just wrote a shorter thing on another thread about this.

I think Nightmist is using the Void for her magic, and her understanding of magic aids her in harnessing the void.  That's why she turns to "mist" instead of being consumed by the Void.

I suspect that the Void taking back is natural, that the Void is always creeping, turning things back to nothingness by nature, not by design or will.  The way a river winds and destroys, that's just how it works.

Argent Adept:  Look at Cedistic Dissonant, the card that can destroy things other cards can't.  "Power for Power, be no more."  Clearly sacrificing an instrument to destroy something big, but we know the Void takes back, perhaps it works on an exchange, similar to concepts of Alchemy?

Oh, and that quote comes from the comic Nightmist.

I think we see the trade-off there, and on the Be the Gate comic, where Nightmist is consuming poweful "toxicants" to fuel her work.

The mists have to be related to the void.

Tome of Elder Magic "You cannot open this book without losing something"

Mist-bound Portal:  The ARG Be the Gate comic had heroes stepping through these, and Mistbound has Voss going into a portal.  

Heck her biggest attack is called Oblivion, and the text is "You shall not enter this world."  She's stopping Gloomweaver at that point, but the connection can't be insignificant.

Mist-Fueled Recovery:  "I am more than mere Shadow - I am the mists themselves."  

I think the "Mists" are a manifestation of the void.

Lastly the "Mist Storm" in Tactics - Uprising is about grabbing Oblivion Shards before "the Mist Storm" (not a mist storm) destroys the island.

I could be way off base, but Everything seems to focus on Nightmist a bit too much for that to just be coincidence.

The Void is The primal energy of the universe, and I think a lot of the magic and cosmic power of the game is from he void.

I agree Oblivaeon was on the losing side of the Wager, and is seeking to restore that which was lost.  The idea of him being the only thing left would make him the only thing drawing power from the void.

Skippy, I am totally with you 100% on all counts there. But lets examine a few things:

Is Argent Adept immune from the give-and-take nature of harnessing the power of these magics because he is in-fact a chosen agent of the Void? Contrast this with Nightmist who is "cursed" with these powers, or LaCommandora who was using the temporal nature of these powers almost unknowingly, or even Scholar and his fading into nothing after becoming a gateway to the infinite void.

If Nightmist is ineed harnessing the power of the Void, what exactly is the relation to the Realm of Discord? Is the RoD a pocket of The Void? An extra-dimensional plane that is not bound or part-and-parcel to the rest of the Multiverse? Consider that when Nightmist first got her powers, a piece the dimension of RoD was trapped into her (and likely by extension, visa-versa) which is what manafests itself as the mists. When considering all of this, what of the Chinese Master who was called by the Mists to teach her about her curse? That Master must be, without a single doubt in my mind, Zhu Long. But that would mean he is aware of these powers and can sense them in the world, and if so, what does that mean for him?

We've been told our current Argent Adept is asexual and that the Virtuoso of Voids are not direct descendents of each other.   Possibly that is part of the cost to time that mantel in that you lose that part of your humanity?

The Virtuoso manipulates the Void, as Nightmist does with Magic, and I suspect Scholar does through ley lines and his stone.

But the big moves are costly, and the exchange comes in.  With training and knowledge from past masters the Argent Adept and Nightmist would know what they can do safely, and how to pay the costs without losing themselves.

The Sentinels, La Capitan, Akash might not use it the same way, or the cost was too high to mitigate.

Scholar of the Infinite and Nightmist becoming the Gate seem to be moments where they exceed their ability to not have to pay the cost, similarly when Adept has to sacrifice one of his relics on Dissonant to pay the cost.

Good point with the Dragon, although it might be telling that in the art chat Christopher was asked if Zhu Long was alone, or if there were other dragons?  Christopher answered: "Zhu Long is not alone.  There are no more dragons."

I think that means that while Dragons aren't a thing beyond Zhu Long there are others like him.  Another asked if there were masters for the other Zodiac Symbols, and got the reply "I cannot speak to that."

Which is cryptic as hell and may mean they've never thought in that direction or that it would ruin something if he spoke about that.

And dammit, I want to know what the non-oblivion shard in the Teddy Bear is.

Perhaps Oblivion Shards are part of Oblivion, and are how he sends his power, but other crystals exist that can also tap into that power.  Who knows?

EDIT:  Should say that I think La Capitan's black spot is from coming in direct contact with the void, when she went past Oblivaeon and found nothing there.

I want to point out a slight misconception here.

Christopher said that the Treacherous Ape was not holding an Oblivion Shard. The Ape Projection. He said nothing about the stuffed ape not containing an Oblivion Shard. You know how Christopher is with his answers.

I went over that old thread.

a few thoughts

1.  A comment, "Is it significant that the Ape is in a circus?" made me think. . .

2.  All the tendrils we see on any Visionary related deck look a lot like the Mist Nightmist uses, and on Precognition the color turns white even.

3.  If the Ape's stone is Dark Visionary feeding off of the Dreamer, is the green energy like a projector beam?  Drawing power from the Dreamer or something?  It doesn't seem to be a projectile at all.

4.  If Mittermeier is connected to Venessa, any one of them, It would be very interestingly placed in the story.  (the coloring scheme is awfully red/purple)

5.  Why were Hammer and Anvil after The Visionary?  Perhaps Dawn was seeking more than just talent, maybe she wanted answers, or insight into the future, I'm sure she isn't oblivious to the signs.

While we have nothing on Dawn so far in Oblivaeon we have, in villains, a lot of stuff linking Dawn and Visionary, including showing signs of the battle between dark and regular.  Oblivaeon we have the Visionary unleashed.  That all has to connect somewhere.

And then in Tactics we have Dawn rushing to gather the shards, while Baron and Omnitron show no desire for them.  Is it significant that Dawn is the first scenario with shards, and the second, Proletariat, involves the Mist Storm and Venessa.

How do Visionary and Dawn fit into this mess. . . gah this is killing me.

I dont think the toy ape's shard is feeding off of young Vanessa, I think it's the other way around. The power of that Oblivion Shard is multiplying her latent psychic powers which end up manifesting themseves in huge and dangerous ways. The shard in the stuffed toy looks identical in shape to the ones the Void Guard have on their persons (Mainstay's massive frickin Oblivion Bloudler aside obviously). The major question thats worth asking here is "Who gave Vanessa that toy ape?". The answer to that question would be very interesting.

While I'm on the subject of the Ape, someone explain to me why he shoots green energy in one picture, but yellow in another. And in that second picture, he isn't even aiming at anything. I've always been vexed by those two cards and no amount of staring at them has helped me understand exactly whats going on.

Hammer and Anvil (EDIT: I'm wrong here. It's Truth and Dare who were in Cocoon) were both Project Cocoon born (note how Cocoon is another shady side project of the US Military along with Ft. Adamant) just like Vanessa was. It could be that they took it a little personal when Visionary saved her younger self from the Project but left all the other kids there to rot. I find it a little hard to believe that Hammer and Anvil would focus on their own agenda solo in their down time when Dawn doesn't need them, however I can't really rule it out either. There is the makings of a personal vendeta there.

According to the Preorder for Villains Dawn sent them on a mission to get The Visionary.

Correction. Citizens Truth and Dare were part of Project Cocoon. 

Okay, figured I'd give my thoughts on some things.

I think The Void Guard is less an indication of the source of their power, but more their role in the upcoming events.  I think maybe they aren't the Void Guard because they have the power of the void (I don't think the power from oblivion shards is the same as void powers), but rather because they are literally guarding the void. Specifically, The Nexus of the Void.

I think the Nexus is the point where all realities/timelines are connected, and since it's on Earth, that is the reason why earth's destruction would also destroy all other realities/timelines.  I think the Nexus is what OblivAeon is after, either to destroy it, or hit the reset button, or whatever. The new Sentinels become the Void Guard to, well, guard the void from OblivAeon.

Where does this leave Akash and Argent Adept?

If the Virtuoso of the Void is an agent of the void, then that means the void represents order since the Virtuoso and Akash fight for those two sides, order and chaos, respectively.  This makes sense, since nothingness is probably as "orderly" as things can possibly get.  There is no chaos in the void… (Edit: It also makes a kind of sense in that there's always a price, a balance, when taking power from the void… There's a certain order to it all…)

So that leaves me with two questions about Akash. (taking my own assumptions into account)

1. Why would she fight against something that if destroyed would destroy the very planet that she is (sort of) the embodiment of? 

Maybe she fights against the void, not to destroy it, but simply for the sake of fighting it because it's in her nature.

2. Why would she take the powers of the void (possibly the powers of the embodiment of Order) if she is that diametrically opposed to the void/order? 

Perhaps she realizes that while they may be on opposite sides, they are merely two sides of the same 'coin'.  And both sides see OblivAeon as the antithesis of the 'coin' itself.

Also, in regards to skippy's post:

They were sent out to "recruit" powered individuals to become new citizens for Dawn.  Perhaps they stumbled upon a young Vanessa and want to take her, but Visionary steps in, and THAT'S why they are nemeses?

Edit: It would likely be much easier to recruit Visionary when she's young, than to deal with her heroic older alternate timeline self… Is what I'm getting at.

You are right! 

 That's why I am here.

Thats why we love you

Sure beats digging through everything to find out for yourself, just post your theories and wait for Ronway to correct the wrong parts.

Remind us what the two cards are?

Reading your description, my first thought is that in one of the pictures he is not shooting, but is getting hit (presumably by Captain Cosmic, given the color).

I believe he is refering to Tachyon's Lightning Reflexes and THe Dreamer's Violent Nightmares.

This is why we keep you around

I'm pretty sure Christopher said that Antony Drake's asexuality is nothing to do with being Virtuoso of the Void. He just is, because he is.

And I'm extremely pleased that's the case.

Imagine if Tachyon was gay because of a lab accident. How terrible would that be?

It would be as terrible as if Doctor Medico was gay because of radiation.

Christopher did say that, in the first Q&A while Adam drew Harpy and Parse.

No one needs supernatural intervention to be asexual, some people just are.

@DerptheBugbear I love the idea that HAmmer and Anvil were after Dreamer instead of Visionary.

I can't add much at the moment. One thought, I do not have my cards at the moment, what is the Flavor Text on Ruin (Baron Blade mini-nemesis to Argent Adept). I remember something about breaking rhythym or ending things in silence.

I can't completely agree with everything being conjunctured. For example, the Nexus of the Void does not look like a place of order. I could be wrong, but it looks like a mismatch of various biomes, thrown together with little rhyme or reason.

So, what if the Adept isn't an agent of the void but instead a... containment for the Void.

Also... here's something interesting.

The Virtuoso of the Void has existed since human culture has existed.

Akash'Bhuta has existed since the natural world has existed.

These two beginnings don't line up. Akash'Bhuta, who was worshipped as a goddess, existed long before her foe. In that case, is it possible that the Virtuoso did not arise to combat Akash'Bhuta but instead arose in response to something else, and fought Akash'Bhuta simply because she threatened all of humanity...

Oooh. Akash'Bhuta threatened humanity, all of it. If she had her way all of humanity would likely have been destroyed. The Adept fights to protect humanity, because humanity is acting as a check, a balance to the Void. AA fights Akash'Bhuta to protect humanity, so that humanity can continue to fill it's role.

Akash'Bhuta isn't a creature of massive wisdom or intellect, she is a being of primal instincts and emotion. She isn't fighting for any grander cause, she destroys because it is her nature to destroy. Argent Adept is the one with the grander plans and motives.

So if the shards in Ft. Adamant were pieces from OblivAeon, how on earth did they get there? They must have been removed before the epic fight with Ra and the Ennead.

Well, one of them might be the one that empowered Captain Cosmic and Infinitor.

About the Void Guard, the update said : "Now, Doctor Medico, Mainstay, The Idealist, and Writhe harness the power of Oblivion Shards and fight against the end of all things. They hold back the Void when no one else can."

Seems they are not working for the Void, but keeping it in check - even if they used Oblivian Shards to get their power upgrade.

Edit : I am beginnign to wonder if destroying OblivAeon may be a "bad" thing - maybe he was the only thing standing opposite to the Void, and now it is the new "cosmic menace" for the Tactics story...

Ah, good! So let's go with colors. From Adam's art, Dr. Medico has a red crystal, Idealist has a white crystal, Mainstay has an orange crystal, and Writhe appears to be purple (although I don't see the actual crystal). The kickstarter update says that they were "each radiating a different spectrum of energy", which may be referring to color or may be referring to something else.

Nigel and Hugh Lowsley found a purple crystal. This is presumably the one Writhe has, then?

Have we seen the other three crystals? None of them are green.

It's in his forehead.

The purple cristal is on Writhe's forehead, I think.

The orange one reminds me of Magmaria, but it may be just an association by color.

Here is a random thought that is probably way off base, but is an intersting thought none-the-less.  After reading through the thread about La Capitan and Akash 'Bhuta, what if they are one in the same.  As we know, Maria Helena travelled through a rift in time that took her to the past, present, and future.  We have also seen from La Comadora and Akash 'Thriya that they both share a black spot that seems to be in the same area of the chest.  Since we can assume that La Comadora and La Capitan met each other sometime in the timeline, what's to say that there wasn't a third entity of Maria Helena that was outside of time?  What if that version through the curse of the void became Akash 'Bhuta and ended up at the beginning of the world.  

This theory then would explain perhaps how both of them have a "black spot" that seems connected to the void and maybe why the Void gave its power to Akash 'Thriya.  Seeing as perhaps Maria Helena had "paid the price" of becoming an embodiment of something out of time and space, she knew now how to control that power and perhaps save herself from the fate.  It is a long-shot, but looking at the deck of Time Cataclysm could suggest this as a possibility.  Just trying to think outside the box.

Good point! Magmaria is full of "Magma Crystals". Some of them appear more reddish (Ember Shaman, Crystal Collector) while others are orange (Smoldering Crystal). They appear more faceted than what Mainstay is swinging, however.

My own interpretation of "They hold back the Void when no one else can" is that, if OblivAeon is successfull in turning the multiverse into a singularity than he then destroys, all that would be left would be The Void. So "holding back the Void" is a fancy way of saying "they are helping stop OblivAeon".

I could be dead wrong about that, but it's how I initially read it.

Other than that, I dont see how defeating OblivAeon could be a bad thing at all when the alternative to doing so is "All reality is destroyed".

I think my use of Order is more about a state of being. I mean, IF the Void is a part of some Order/Chaos dichotomy, even that order experiences some chaos from time to time. If it didn't, the Wager would have never been lost. But what I'm thinking is that the Void strives for Order or an equalibrium of sorts, which is why it seeks to take back when its been taken from.

Would you mind expanding on your idea of Adept as a "containment"? It sounds cool and I'd like to know where you were going with it.

My point was not it was "bad", but that maybe OblivAeon's plan to destroy reality as we now it is a way for him to fight the Void. Once Obli out, the Void may have free reign - and its intentions may be even worse than OblivAeon's. There may be an old conflict between these two (maybe because of the Wager), and the fact that one prefers to use villains while the other empowers heroes may not be a clue to their final intentions...

The Heroes have no ther choice than stop OblivAeon - but it may have consequences and give rise to another, even bigger, threat.

Of course it's just speculations founded on imaginative interpretations of a few clues - like everything else here.

Ok I see what you are saying now. You have OblivAeon and the Void as combatants. The way I saw it was the OblivAeon wants a return to nothing but the Void.

I have to admit though that any speculation really kinda lives and dies by what exactly The Void is.

True. My "Comics Sense" - known to be unreliable - tells me that there is always a bigger threat, even if it takes years for it to reveal, and the Void may be the next one. With Christopher orchestrating the story, you never know :D

The fact that the Void is suddenly alluded everywhere in the last expansion, though, may either mean that we will know more in the expansion itself, or that Christopher decided to give us something to wonder about for a few more years !

John had always had an affinity for altering the very threads of existence. He could feel them as they stretched around him, connecting everything to everything else. So, when those lines drew him to a mysterious, glowing stone, he knew it was right and proper to take it with him

Thought I'd post this bit of Bio from Scholar. His stone HAS to truely be an Oblivion Shard right? I don't see any other explaination for him becoming a gateway to the infinite void.

Here, were can see Christopher said he made the alchemist stone. Perhaps his made it using an Oblivion Shard?

I read that too, but the official Scholar bio explicitly states that ley lines drew him to a stone that he found. They don't jive.

So either the Bio is wrong and Christopher has since issued a retcon, or you are correct that the stone (ie. Oblivion Shard) he found he used to make his alchemy stone.

This needs to be asked today during the Q&A.

The Akash'thrya relation with the void had me think about something. She made a pact with the void - and will have to pay the price someday/someway. And this seems to happen often for people who interact with it.

That's what you call "making a deal with the Devil", Faust-like.

Could there be a link between the Void and the Host ?

Maybe the Void is where the Host lives ?

Maybe the Virtuoso also has the task to keep the Void "closed" - after all, we now that Argent Adept was not fully teached in the way of the Virtuoso, the former Virtuoso died without having the time to explain much. Maybe AA doesn't know all the "missions" he has to accomplish as a Virtuoso, and Akash'Bhuta is just one of them...

It's based almost entirely off the visual, but the Void looks like a whirpool (Also assuming the giant purple spot is the Void mentioned in Nexus of the Void). The rocks in the upper corner are breakingoff towards the hole, the ice floe is heading towards one of the cracks, the river is falling into a crack… though also coming out of one maybe.

So, giant hole in reality, pulling things in, why doesn't it grow bigger? Is it simply that size and only that size or is something keeping it from ripping open and taking much more down into its depths? One of the jobs of the Virtuoso could be to maintain balance, to set boundaries on the edges of the Void to prevent it from growing too large.

Wish I could mutli-quote

About the Scholar and his stone… It was never once stated that the stone the Scholar is carrying is the exact same stone the leylines led him to.

It is more than possible that given the Scholar's nature and ability to manipulate Leylines he was able to take an Oblivion Shard and shape it into a different stone… Oooh… The Southwest Sentinels found their stones during Chokepoint's attack on Ft. Adamant. Before that they sent a message to the FV about a bunch of stuff they learned. The FV receive the message, eventually decode it, but Chokepoint already left Ft Adamant with whatever she was after. Termi-Nation arc tkaes place as Untiy, Bunker and AZ fight Chokepoint. Then OblivAeon and his Scions begin attacking, Ra makes his last stand at Ft. Adamant, the heroes study the shard, they hear from one of the Scions. What if it is after that point the Void Guard shows up?

My point. How long did the Sentinels have their shards before they became the Void Guard. All for out of space-time metamorphosis, as that is a possibility. Akash'Bhuta ends up with a shard, spending time gathering power from it and it changes her and itself, since the purple crystal growths on Akash'Darsha are very different from the shard. The only other people we see handling a shard are the Citizens of the Sun, who grab and run, and Dawn only has hers for… hours maybe? What if the stone and wielder effect each other, shaping the stone by the weilders nature and understanding. That would explain how Writhe has a small crystal in his head but Mainstay has a giant boulder on a chain, yet those shrds are suposed to be equivalent

Maybe the ley lines led him to the stone that he made into the stone he has now.

We have other discrepancies too, for example We have Greatest Legacy fighting robot soldiers, but before that we had the war zeppelins.  I don't know if they retconned some things, or if they are both true, like War Zeppelins carrying robot soldiers, or maybe they were different times they fought.

Um. What?

So, when those lines drew him to a mysterious, glowing stone, he knew it was right and proper to take it with him. The stone allows him to twist the lines, rather than just perceive them, and he can now easily transmute objects into other materials

Don't get me wrong, the idea that Christopher could be purposefully blatently misleading in these two sentences is not lost on me.

But If the Oblivion Shard he found is the thing that allowed him to transmute objects, then why did he need to create a Philosophers Stone in the first place? It starts to break down for me here and something doesn't add up.

And we have the answer now. He made his current stone out of the material of the stone that he found. Source: today's FAQ.

So it seems to me pretty much confirmed in the Q&A that the stone Scholar found was in fact an Oblivion Shard and he used it to create his Philosophers stone. This holds consistent with the theories we have on the Void and his Infinite Void promo, and the fact that there have been at least 2 instances of Oblivion shards in the story prior to the Void Guard Release. With confirmation that the toy ape does not hold such a shard, that leaves the two being the one Scholar found and the one that created both Infinitor and Capt Cosmic.

Also there was some solid Adept info too. Argent Adept indeed harnesses and controls the power of the Void through his music and it certainly takes a lot of strength to do it.

Today was a good day for the FAQ

A possibility : OblivAeon uses the void as his source of powers.

He exploits the power of the Void - this gives him his incredible level of power. Maybe he does it through somekind of highly advanced technology or magic, maybe by "condensing" the void into the Shards.

And maybe the Void, if it is sentient, empowers heroes to try to escape his binding by OblivAeon. Or, if it is not sentient - and just a mindless "force", is just "used" by heroes/villains to gain more power - but with potentially dangerous side effects, like trying to harness the power of a radioactive source.

We know nothing about OblivAeon and the source of his immense power yet. And look, the Void is now mentioned everywhere...

Here's my guess:  The Void is the ultimate source of all things.  Oblivaeon came from it, as did the other being who made the Bet ( and maybe Jansa vi Dero, if she's not the same ).  Our universe does not come directly from the Void, however, but indirectly by way of the primal gods who arise from the Void.  So, I don't think Oblivaeon has bound the Void, he just draws upon its power by virtue of being a primal god born of the Void.  He *might*, however, seek to destroy the Void, so there is no Void, merely Oblivaeon.  I don't think its certain, though, he may "merely" wish to destroy all of Creation.

Under this theory, Oblivion Shards are sources of vast power because they are essentially fragments of Congealed Infinity.  I suspect that a similar mechanism is how the Terminarch creates new Endlings:  they aren't merely the last of their races, they are invested with a spark of the Infinite Void by Jansa.  It also means that not everything cosmic arises from Oblivaeon, and its possible to have cosmic power not tainted by Oblivaeon.  You just have to either get it from a different god, or straight from the Void, and all said options have their own drawbacks.

Has someone compiled a story FAQ somewhere that I'm missing?

Sorry, I was refering to the Q and A with Christopher. We got quite a bit of good stuff from him this time around.