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That's what we called them. Large volumes of space stretching upwards of several hundred megaparsecs, the largest of which were over 2 Gigalightyears in diameter.
Ok so its just a big stretch of emptiness in Space, so what? you might say. FOOOOOOL
At the center of each of those voids are rifts of time, space and sanity. From them spawn living beings the size of entire galactic arms. Things that only yearn for destruction simply for the sake of destruction and with them come their followers creatures that slaughter, rape and torture not only us but themselves for their enjoyment.
We stood in battle with the Chaos voids for 100s of thousands of millennia. There were victories to be had but it was only against the smallest, the weakest of voids. Against voids like the [LOWZ North 13788] void or the [Local Hole] void we could only hope to fight them, at the cost of billiards of lives each decade.
So when the massive incursions known from the [Local Hole] void JUST stoped and we were actually able to advance it stood to reason and to ask... ... what the fuck? As we pushed, for the first time in... ever, and got ever closer to the voids center... sigh of unbeliving... we found a galaxy, not only alive but thriving. Where chaos and madness should have snuffed out or twisted any live that was to be found there, stood a species of order and sanity. Surrounded by chaos, death and destruction, alone, they fought and won. Constantly. To the point where they advanced to the biggest, ever recorded, chaos rift.
As we are about to make first contact with, what we dubbed them, the void order, i can only hope that in time, may it be hundreds or thousands of millennia, we are rid of this evil.
“You realize this when you interact with them in person, when you watch their children play. They’re as chaotic and destructive as the beings we’re fighting.”
“Then why are they killing us?”
“Empathy. Most of them, not all, but most, have the capacity to care that doing horrible things hurts thinking beings.”
“Most?”
“Yeah. They have clinical terms for the lack of empathy, but the ‘Dark Triad’ personalities tend to end up in leadership positions anyway.”
Alien J'hon: How are you humans able to function at all, born so close to the centre of a void?
Human Fred: I dunno, maybe... because we were born there, we're just used to it? I mean, it's like...do you ever get intrusive thoughts?
J'hon: No. What are these "intrusive thoughts"?
Fred: They're like... a voice in your head, saying nasty things like "What if I just beat this nice guy I've only just met until his head is a bloody pulp?"
J'hon: What?!
Fred: Yeah, like that. We get those thoughts all the time.
J'hon: You're not...getting those thoughts right now, are you? *Is suddenly afraid of their human friend*
Fred: Like I said, ALL the time. But it's okay, we're used to it! We - well, MOST of us - can just tune those thoughts out, get on with our day like normal friendly human beings.
J'hon: Oh, well then that's...good, I guess. Although the "most" is a bit concerning...
Fred: (continuing on) and then there's intrusive thoughts like "What if I just stepped out into traffic?" or "What if I just jumped off the edge of this cliff?"
J'hon: But you can ignore those ones also, yes?
Fred: Naturally. They come all the time.
Human Bobbie: Yeah - we know those ones as "The Call of the Void".
J'hon: "The Call of..." .... you can't be serious - right?
AUDIO FILE - Description: Indistinct warbling and a staccato bass noise. SOURCE: NON-HUMAN VOCALIZATION
ASTRONOMICAL COORDINATES - Description: Coordinates match no known galactic position. HYPOTHESIS: COORDINATES DO NOT ORIGINATE FROM THIS GALAXY
— DATA LOG ENDS —
SIGNAL INDICATES INTELLIGENT LIFE OF INTERGALACTIC NON-HUMAN SPECIES
FORCE TRANSLATION.......
TRANSLATION COMPLETE
— TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS —
Alien: Grand Curator, I have dire news!
GC: Speak Archivist, what troubles you so?
A: It's the Penal Galaxy, your eminence.
GC: The Penal Galaxy? As I recall the spore destroyed the last planet with life in that galaxy approximately 66 million years ago. We knew the direction it was heading and moved or destroyed all galaxies near it and removed any material that would allow warp capabilities. The spore should run out of resources in the next fifty billion years and die.
A: That's the problem, the spore is dead already...
SILENCE
GC: That's not possible! Nothing we've ever tried has been able to kill it.
A: After we received our last visual from the automated observatory in orbit around the planet, we were able to determine that all life wasn't exterminated by the spore. Creatures survived and evolved...
GC: Impossible! Is just not possible! The spore can be killed! Besides that, remaining life evolving? Preposterous, evolution takes billions upon billions of years! That's why most planets never end up developing life!
A: I know, your eminence. But look at the data! Life has been rapidly evolving on that planet since before the spore hit! The predominant species seems to have absorbed the spore.
GC: Dear gods beyond the veil... Notify the council, we must do something about this before+++//BREAK: DATA CORRUPTED
— END SUMMARY —
Human: Yo Jeff, did the creepy computer just say something really concerning or am I just too high right now?
Jeff: For fucks sake, Eric! I told you, not at work!
When our signals were sent out, we were skeptical at best. We were quite literally shouting into the void.
When ancient sensors picked up a squeak from a dusty empty corner of space, “they” were surprised. There hadn’t been a single non-conformed life-form left in between the borders of space.
When we received a response, a garbled pulse that affected mind and machine alike, we were horrified. Machines and man malfunctioned, few recovered. The message had no words, no sound, simply one cruel, overwhelming feeling: HUNGER
All but the strongest of humanity crumbled within minutes… and they hadn’t even arrived yet.
Let it be known that we will not go out with a quiet squeak but with the loudest battle cry we may muster.
Wait wait wait , just yesterday i heard that our solarsystem is in an small bubble of nothing and now you want to tell me the galaxy is in a bubble of nothing too ?
"Void" in this case is a bit of a misnomer. The KBC Void (or Local Hole if you prefer) still contains an unfathomable amount of galaxies, stars and planets. A lot of our home supercluster of Laniakea resides inside it. Void simply refers to a comparatively empty or underdense region of space, not that there is literally nothing there.
Think of it like living on an acreage instead of living in a metropolis.
Sshhh... It's just a nice shape. Very nice shape. Would probably look great on emblems and tattoos, right? Or as the layout of important buildings, like temples or such.
A2: Yeah as far as I can tell, some folks from earth spend so much time listening to the background radiation of space, they figured out how to harness it and use it to their advantage
A1: That sounds insanely dangerous. Did council really send us here for just for observation?
A2: See that's the thing, they can bend reality but they can only do it in ways only the practitioner notices.
A1: What do you mean?
A2: It seems like, despite having immense power at their command, the majority of "Magicians" use their knowledge for petty things. Money, popularity, confidence, etc... they also tend to be insufferable like, socially.
A1: So we are here to watch a bunch of socially inept monkeys bang away at the fabric of the universe and hope they don't do anything drastic...?
Alien : Humans, HOW TF DID YOU SURVIVE THAT CLOSE TO THE CHAOS GATE?!!, Humanity not knowing that their eye colors are a sign of chaos resistant gene : The what? 👁👄👁
"...So in essence, this nucleus of chaos itself acts as a black hole of sorts- pulling in all energy and matter towards it based on its order of magnitude." the large-headed alien explained, "Many peoples have made their own, however this usually results in a couple lightyear-wide band surrounding their native systems... Yours was easily the size of a middling nebula."
The humans present nod, absorbing this information before one speaks- "What you're saying is that something near us was so chaotic that it basically damned us to be alone until you guys showed up?" he asked- a simplification of the events and request for confirmation. The alien nodded.
"Precisely, however this usually is the sort of work eldritch beings do, and usually a divide of that size wipes everyone and everything at its epicentre out..." the scientist began once again as she seemed rather confused herself, "The fact that your sun didn't burn out- never mind life surviving, growing into you and becoming intelligent to find life beyond the void..."
The three humans there began to mutter amongst themselves before the youngest of the lot spoke up...
"We have stories of great evils- gods, demons, great extinction events... We don't know which may have been it nor if humans were even around at that time, but if we survived... I can guarantee we must have killed the problem." he said, a strange darkness in his eyes, "Every evil we have come across has been vanquished- especially those of our own origin. If this being, anomaly or whatever does persist in some form, we have certainly got the means to keep it down."
"To add to that in a much less dramatic and quite frankly psychotic manner- we may also be descended from them in some way, whether we harvested something from them, came from them or happened upon their corpse, we are industrious enough to use whatever we find." another butted in, "It would explain quite a lot, actually- poison immunity and beneficial use of them, us being otherwise ill-adapted, the entropic footprint of mankind..."
"We also have tales of the incomprehensible scattered in our folklore- while most succumb to the incomprehension, we have a rare few who can either understand enough to comprehend them or are blissfully able to not even begin comprehending them." the third added, "So a very good outcome for us, for the rest of you... Vote's not in just yet but we're up for a good fight on your side, so our intent is golden."
The foreigner to their land watched on in horror as the three explained their strange history, theories and reasoning- this was a clear-cut case of an anomaly in of itself, their people warped by a near-miss of the biggest eldritch happening and being the only known survivor of such an event... Even then, they seemed to be more than sane enough- perhaps maladjusted and a little mad, but otherwise peaceful...
KyleKKent has 1500+ chapters on this prompt already, in effect. His story 'Out Of Cruel Space" is basically that, with the caveat that it is a a dead space within the galaxy, as opposed to the Galaxy itself being within that space.
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Voids of chaos.
That's what we called them. Large volumes of space stretching upwards of several hundred megaparsecs, the largest of which were over 2 Gigalightyears in diameter.
Ok so its just a big stretch of emptiness in Space, so what? you might say. FOOOOOOL
At the center of each of those voids are rifts of time, space and sanity. From them spawn living beings the size of entire galactic arms. Things that only yearn for destruction simply for the sake of destruction and with them come their followers creatures that slaughter, rape and torture not only us but themselves for their enjoyment.
We stood in battle with the Chaos voids for 100s of thousands of millennia. There were victories to be had but it was only against the smallest, the weakest of voids. Against voids like the [LOWZ North 13788] void or the [Local Hole] void we could only hope to fight them, at the cost of billiards of lives each decade.
So when the massive incursions known from the [Local Hole] void JUST stoped and we were actually able to advance it stood to reason and to ask... ... what the fuck? As we pushed, for the first time in... ever, and got ever closer to the voids center... sigh of unbeliving... we found a galaxy, not only alive but thriving. Where chaos and madness should have snuffed out or twisted any live that was to be found there, stood a species of order and sanity. Surrounded by chaos, death and destruction, alone, they fought and won. Constantly. To the point where they advanced to the biggest, ever recorded, chaos rift.
As we are about to make first contact with, what we dubbed them, the void order, i can only hope that in time, may it be hundreds or thousands of millennia, we are rid of this evil.
Thank gods the species of order and sanity managed to survive the humans. Imagine if those chaos monkeys had been the ones to breach the quarantine...
I dunno. Maybe we were just enough OF Chaos to innoculate reality by exposure. We became the vaccine for the disease devouring the universe.
I read that as "just enough Only Fans Chaos" and thought to myself: sounds about right.
At some point, you just stop questioning these things :D
“What do you mean humans ARE a void species?”
“You realize this when you interact with them in person, when you watch their children play. They’re as chaotic and destructive as the beings we’re fighting.”
“Then why are they killing us?”
“Empathy. Most of them, not all, but most, have the capacity to care that doing horrible things hurts thinking beings.”
“Most?”
“Yeah. They have clinical terms for the lack of empathy, but the ‘Dark Triad’ personalities tend to end up in leadership positions anyway.”
Alien J'hon: How are you humans able to function at all, born so close to the centre of a void?
Human Fred: I dunno, maybe... because we were born there, we're just used to it? I mean, it's like...do you ever get intrusive thoughts?
J'hon: No. What are these "intrusive thoughts"?
Fred: They're like... a voice in your head, saying nasty things like "What if I just beat this nice guy I've only just met until his head is a bloody pulp?"
J'hon: What?!
Fred: Yeah, like that. We get those thoughts all the time.
J'hon: You're not...getting those thoughts right now, are you? *Is suddenly afraid of their human friend*
Fred: Like I said, ALL the time. But it's okay, we're used to it! We - well, MOST of us - can just tune those thoughts out, get on with our day like normal friendly human beings.
J'hon: Oh, well then that's...good, I guess. Although the "most" is a bit concerning...
Fred: (continuing on) and then there's intrusive thoughts like "What if I just stepped out into traffic?" or "What if I just jumped off the edge of this cliff?"
J'hon: But you can ignore those ones also, yes?
Fred: Naturally. They come all the time.
Human Bobbie: Yeah - we know those ones as "The Call of the Void".
J'hon: "The Call of..." .... you can't be serious - right?
.
.
.
RIGHT?!??
checks footnotes... hmmm. yes, that's what they are called. "humans".
Not bad. But you probably mean trillions. Milliarden, Billiarden etc aren't being used in English.
Milliarden, billiarden, etc. werden zwar nicht umgangssprachlich genutzt, jedoch existieren diese in der Englischen sprachen.
Des weiteren klingt 'billiards' lustig.
Trotzdem wird so gut wie niemand wissen, was du mit billiard meinst, da das Wort nicht mehr genutzt wird.
This is great, I love it! But I got a good chuckle at "the cost of billiards of lives" 🤣🤣 just what I needed as I'm getting ready to walk into work. 😀
DEEP SPACE SIGNAL RECEIVED
INITIATE DECRYPTION........
DECRYPTION COMPLETE
— DATA LOG FOLLOWS —
AUDIO FILE - Description: Indistinct warbling and a staccato bass noise. SOURCE: NON-HUMAN VOCALIZATION
ASTRONOMICAL COORDINATES - Description: Coordinates match no known galactic position. HYPOTHESIS: COORDINATES DO NOT ORIGINATE FROM THIS GALAXY
— DATA LOG ENDS —
SIGNAL INDICATES INTELLIGENT LIFE OF INTERGALACTIC NON-HUMAN SPECIES
FORCE TRANSLATION.......
TRANSLATION COMPLETE
— TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS —
Alien: Grand Curator, I have dire news!
GC: Speak Archivist, what troubles you so?
A: It's the Penal Galaxy, your eminence.
GC: The Penal Galaxy? As I recall the spore destroyed the last planet with life in that galaxy approximately 66 million years ago. We knew the direction it was heading and moved or destroyed all galaxies near it and removed any material that would allow warp capabilities. The spore should run out of resources in the next fifty billion years and die.
A: That's the problem, the spore is dead already...
SILENCE
GC: That's not possible! Nothing we've ever tried has been able to kill it.
A: After we received our last visual from the automated observatory in orbit around the planet, we were able to determine that all life wasn't exterminated by the spore. Creatures survived and evolved...
GC: Impossible! Is just not possible! The spore can be killed! Besides that, remaining life evolving? Preposterous, evolution takes billions upon billions of years! That's why most planets never end up developing life!
A: I know, your eminence. But look at the data! Life has been rapidly evolving on that planet since before the spore hit! The predominant species seems to have absorbed the spore.
GC: Dear gods beyond the veil... Notify the council, we must do something about this before+++//BREAK: DATA CORRUPTED
— END SUMMARY —
Human: Yo Jeff, did the creepy computer just say something really concerning or am I just too high right now?
Jeff: For fucks sake, Eric! I told you, not at work!
The mitochondria is the powerhouse of OUR cells
Oh that's a fascinating spin on it!
Interesting, the idea that life is just faster here.
Meanwhile, a speciea of space primates casually using them as a source of fuel :
When our signals were sent out, we were skeptical at best. We were quite literally shouting into the void.
When ancient sensors picked up a squeak from a dusty empty corner of space, “they” were surprised. There hadn’t been a single non-conformed life-form left in between the borders of space.
When we received a response, a garbled pulse that affected mind and machine alike, we were horrified. Machines and man malfunctioned, few recovered. The message had no words, no sound, simply one cruel, overwhelming feeling: HUNGER
All but the strongest of humanity crumbled within minutes… and they hadn’t even arrived yet.
Let it be known that we will not go out with a quiet squeak but with the loudest battle cry we may muster.
Wait wait wait , just yesterday i heard that our solarsystem is in an small bubble of nothing and now you want to tell me the galaxy is in a bubble of nothing too ?
Apparently so. As far as I know, which isn't far, our galaxy and local cluster is in a "super void" where almost nothing besides us exists.
"Void" in this case is a bit of a misnomer. The KBC Void (or Local Hole if you prefer) still contains an unfathomable amount of galaxies, stars and planets. A lot of our home supercluster of Laniakea resides inside it. Void simply refers to a comparatively empty or underdense region of space, not that there is literally nothing there.
Think of it like living on an acreage instead of living in a metropolis.
hmmmmmmmmmm, a very suspicious 8 pointed star
https://preview.redd.it/xhes1by12i9g1.jpeg?width=320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=84ee0d48954d84f917e9b478769b0dcb1f616beb
Sshhh... It's just a nice shape. Very nice shape. Would probably look great on emblems and tattoos, right? Or as the layout of important buildings, like temples or such.
Don't worry, it heals (whispersmaybe) I know it being just above my eyebrows looks painful, but it isn't I swear
BROTHER, HANS, GET ZE FLAMER!! ZE HEAVY ONE, BROTHER!!
https://preview.redd.it/qs4tmu5pfs9g1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5b462d08326ae089457036d894c9693a020cd714
https://preview.redd.it/o6c3qfkqis9g1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4b87da1dbaeaffa96720d6c659d3c8566052a70c
https://preview.redd.it/vdbpn1jpus9g1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aff198ccda7281a0f31e329127ba5f120c1039f9
Fun Fact: we have such a good view of distant stars because we are more distant from them than the average star system.
Therefore the Sol system is inside a bubble of the Milky Way which in this supposition is also in a bubble at the intergalactic level.
A box within a box… and isolation cell within a remote prison.
A1: ... and they call it "chaos magic"?
A2: Yeah as far as I can tell, some folks from earth spend so much time listening to the background radiation of space, they figured out how to harness it and use it to their advantage
A1: That sounds insanely dangerous. Did council really send us here for just for observation?
A2: See that's the thing, they can bend reality but they can only do it in ways only the practitioner notices.
A1: What do you mean?
A2: It seems like, despite having immense power at their command, the majority of "Magicians" use their knowledge for petty things. Money, popularity, confidence, etc... they also tend to be insufferable like, socially.
A1: So we are here to watch a bunch of socially inept monkeys bang away at the fabric of the universe and hope they don't do anything drastic...?
A2: Lucky us...
Alien : Humans, HOW TF DID YOU SURVIVE THAT CLOSE TO THE CHAOS GATE?!!, Humanity not knowing that their eye colors are a sign of chaos resistant gene : The what? 👁👄👁
Ok but: the Meteor roughly 65 million years ago might not have been one... and chaos fuckery might have fucked the timeline saving our butts
Purple eyes are the sign of greatest resistance.
Those with purple eyes will stand and fight, even as the planet breaks around them.
"...So in essence, this nucleus of chaos itself acts as a black hole of sorts- pulling in all energy and matter towards it based on its order of magnitude." the large-headed alien explained, "Many peoples have made their own, however this usually results in a couple lightyear-wide band surrounding their native systems... Yours was easily the size of a middling nebula."
The humans present nod, absorbing this information before one speaks- "What you're saying is that something near us was so chaotic that it basically damned us to be alone until you guys showed up?" he asked- a simplification of the events and request for confirmation. The alien nodded.
"Precisely, however this usually is the sort of work eldritch beings do, and usually a divide of that size wipes everyone and everything at its epicentre out..." the scientist began once again as she seemed rather confused herself, "The fact that your sun didn't burn out- never mind life surviving, growing into you and becoming intelligent to find life beyond the void..."
The three humans there began to mutter amongst themselves before the youngest of the lot spoke up...
"We have stories of great evils- gods, demons, great extinction events... We don't know which may have been it nor if humans were even around at that time, but if we survived... I can guarantee we must have killed the problem." he said, a strange darkness in his eyes, "Every evil we have come across has been vanquished- especially those of our own origin. If this being, anomaly or whatever does persist in some form, we have certainly got the means to keep it down."
"To add to that in a much less dramatic and quite frankly psychotic manner- we may also be descended from them in some way, whether we harvested something from them, came from them or happened upon their corpse, we are industrious enough to use whatever we find." another butted in, "It would explain quite a lot, actually- poison immunity and beneficial use of them, us being otherwise ill-adapted, the entropic footprint of mankind..."
"We also have tales of the incomprehensible scattered in our folklore- while most succumb to the incomprehension, we have a rare few who can either understand enough to comprehend them or are blissfully able to not even begin comprehending them." the third added, "So a very good outcome for us, for the rest of you... Vote's not in just yet but we're up for a good fight on your side, so our intent is golden."
The foreigner to their land watched on in horror as the three explained their strange history, theories and reasoning- this was a clear-cut case of an anomaly in of itself, their people warped by a near-miss of the biggest eldritch happening and being the only known survivor of such an event... Even then, they seemed to be more than sane enough- perhaps maladjusted and a little mad, but otherwise peaceful...
"Right... Well, welcome to the Federation."
Awesome!
KORN FOR THE CORN GOD!
LOTR orcs shouting Grond
CORN! CORN! CORN! CORN!
Korn?
*rabid dog noises with the sound of a dying lawnmower*
Human plot armor sounds like a protective spell of Tzeentch
Humanity has breached containment. The universe is doomed.
Lol, I had one idea that we were in a penal colony or a zoo for dangerous animals and didn't know it.
KyleKKent has 1500+ chapters on this prompt already, in effect. His story 'Out Of Cruel Space" is basically that, with the caveat that it is a a dead space within the galaxy, as opposed to the Galaxy itself being within that space.