Power of the Void

Black hole sun, won't you come...


"Embrace the stillness of eternity!"
—Exdeath's EX Burst "Power of the Void", Dissidia Final Fantasy

Some characters use the Power of Darkness to show off how cool they are. Not this guy. When darkness isn't dark enough, the only thing that can properly express your morally dubious badassery is the Power of the Void--power over nothingness.

Of course, how this actually works isn't always very clear. Which makes sense, really; how are you going to make cool fight scenes when a character's power is the ability to control, well, nothing? In many cases, apparently by giving him lasers, energy blasts, and various other powers that other characters already have, with minor cosmetic changes to show that they come from the Void. Other works are better about portraying this, involving powers like erasing objects and unfortunate people from existence, manipulating black holes, and draining Life Energy. Powers over cold and darkness come up often as well—this makes sense, since they are technically defined by a lack of energy. Sometimes, this also involves partial or total Cessation of Existence as a physical trait (in the partial case, functioning much like an Absurdly Sharp Blade in that it "cuts" by removing physical matter, and in the latter case simply sucks an object or person into nothingness)

For obvious reasons, the Power of the Void is frequently the gimmick of Nietzsche Wannabes, Omnicidal Maniacs and outright Eldritch Abominations. It can also be the result of a Yin-Yang Bomb, however, in which case it is equally likely to be found in the hands of someone more heroically inclined.

Interestingly, Void is sometimes considered the Fifth Classical Element, particularly in a universe that uses the Void Between the Worlds. It may even be an Infinity+1 Element.

Examples of Power of the Void include:

Anime and Manga

  • The Void card in Cardcaptor Sakura has the power to make anything she hits not exist.
  • Bleach Bount arc: The Bount Sawatari's doll is Baura, a huge fish-like monster. Baura can enter and travel through a void-like dimension, allowing him to disappear and reappear through any surface. When he swallows an opponent, the victim is stored in the void dimension.
  • Havoc in Darker than Black got the power to instantly vacuumize large volumes, with fatal results to people and some constructions in an affected area. Considering her remuneration was drinking children's blood... Well, let's just say that De-Power was badly needed.
  • In the Slayers series, Lina's Giga Slave.

Sylphiel: "Yours is a spell that invites a void into this world. It is the power to extinguish energy and return matter to nothingness. The bringer of the void becomes its very embodiment."

  • Dio Brando's Dragon Vanilla Ice has the ability to wrap his Stand, Cream, around him and swallow up anything in the void within it.
  • In Zatch Bell, the White-Haired Pretty Boy mamono; Clear Note is the villain of the last story arc of the manga. He uses this trope for his spell theme "annihilation". He is a Person of Mass Destruction, whose declared goal is to kill every single mamono (himself too eventually) and obliterate Makai. He does not "come from the void" in any sense, though, and his will to destroy comes from him being controlled by his own spell.
  • While Louise's aligned element is named "Void", it has nothing to do with darkness or nothingness. It just blows things up...very powerfully.
    • It also seems to cover some Anti-Magic, which fits the "Void" theme better.
  • Blackbeard can use his Gravity-controlling powers he gets from the Yami Yami no Mi to absorb materials into the dark, smoke-like substance it creates, completly erasing what it absorbs off the surface of the Earth, even compared to a Black Hole. However, he can also expel the same matter, albeit crushed from the Gravity within the Void.
  • Inuyasha, both Miroku and Sesshomaru could be said to have this power. Miroku in his wind tunnel, and Sesshomaru in his Meido technique.
    • Kanna is, according to Naraku, an embodiment of nothingness. In other words, she IS the void. Because of this, she has no scent, no aura, and is immune to aura attacks of any kind. Inuyasha learned this the hard way.
  • Alive the Final Evolution: The estranged best friend who isn't the Big Bad, exactly, but still a big threat and main quest object has void-type, negation and unbeing powers that manifest primarily as the ability to put holes in things. This can be quite horrible. Later on he ditches his physical body, making him Nigh Invulnerable.
    • The completely cracked painter Yura (who started out physically repulsive and somehow through Art Evolution became rather stunning, despite poor dental care) can create bubbles that blow up and seem to operate similarly, but when the aforementioned best friend character scatters his Swiss-cheesing ability around the stuff he hits just ceases to be. A good example of the damage he can do? Throughout the course of the series, he halved a metric ton of peoples' bodies (or just made holes appear in their heads), and then even gave the same treatment to the greater part of a MOUNTAIN.
  • A rather nasty villain sports this sort of power in the later arcs of Saiyuki.
  • Naruto Shippuden's Chibaku Tensei, a Void Style technique that creates a miniature black hole strong enough to create a planetary mass from the earth, even the moon. It looks exactly like the picture on this page. Only Naruto has been able to break out of such an attack, but only because he formed eight tails.


Collectible Card Game

  • The page image is the card Damnation from Magic: The Gathering, but there are plenty of other spells that involve abusing the void.
  • Void is the fifth and Infinity Plus One Element in the Legend of the Five Rings, but amusingly, it's not this trope (it's really more like "spirit," or what have you). Instead, we have The Lying Darkness, which empowers assorted ninja and the like in their efforts to steal the names and identities of good guys and bad guys alike.


Comic Books


Fanfic

  • There is a Starcraft/Star Wars crossover where Zeratul realizes that both the Light and Dark sides of the Force are the same psychic powers practiced by the Protoss (hence why Jedi are prone to falling to the Dark Side: without the Khala's discipline, they can't control it). By rejecting both, Jedi become able to use the very same powers practiced by Protoss Dark Templars, including making oneself invisible. A padawan practising this describes that while the Force feels warm, the Void feels cold and empty.
  • In the Pony POV Series, this is both the Draconequi's most dangerous power and their greatest weakness. They can erase things from existence, including their own wounds, but they can't effect anything created by taking away or the abscence of something. Ice is one of the only things that can actually successfully trap them for any period of time and if someone's power comes from something like this, for example, despair, they can't effect them at all. This is even true for Discord, who is extremely powerful even by his species' standards.
  • Luna uses this in Elementals of Harmony. Faced with a physical manifestation of the element of Honesty that is damaging the universe by existing, she moves herself between it and the sun and unleashes a spell that turns her shadow into the truth of the heat death of the universe. She personally considers that spell to be Black Magic, and not in the Magic: The Gathering sense.


Literature

  • In the Keys to the Kingdom series, the substance of the void is called "Nothing", and beings composed of it are called "Nithlings".
  • The Nothing from The Neverending Story.
  • In a Michael Moorcock story, one of the heroes encounters an area of the world that's a complete white void. After wandering around for a while, he discovers a Reality Warper that for various reasons wants to be one with the perfect void. The hero grants the Reality Warper's wish by shooting him with an arrow point blank; once the Reality Warper dies, the white void becomes a normal landscape again.
  • In The Silmarillion, the Unlight of Ungoliant falls somewhere between Dark Is Edgy and the Power of the Void.
  • The villain in Dragons Winter has command over the void. It's how he manages to bind Karadur's power.
  • The Void is one of the five elemental zones in the middle of Xanth.
  • The true villains of the Time Quartet series by Madeleine L'Engle are The Echthroi. Beings who want to spread nothing on spiritual level, destroying not just life and matter but souls, and ruining all existence from beginning to end. Their "true" form is described as being like a gash in existence or a streak of Nothingness which is so terrible it causes 'reality' to scream, even in space.
  • The Void is one of the five elements in the Sovereign Stone trilogy, and Void mages can mimic the powers of any other element, so long as they're used for destructive purposes. However, Void magic is inherently inimical to life as we know it, so if you're not undead (or Dagnarus), using it for anything powerful will cause you to break out in lots of deeply unpleasant sores, and can kill you under some conditions. Most Void mages are consequently either sparing with their power, or totally insane.
  • In Marie Brennan's Doppelganger series, the Void is recognized as an element in its own right; however, witches can't perform any magic associated with it (although they can use any of the four classical Elemental Powers). It eventually turns out that this is because void magic is associated with movement (e.g., dance—the other elemental powers are associated with song), which is not the domain of the witches but rather their doppelganger halves, who they've been killing off. A few witches' quest to fix this drives much of the stories' plot.
  • "Unmagic" from the Circle of Magic books. Mage characters are horrified by it, saying it's the absence of all else - light, magic, existence; a blight as much as magic, and it drives users to lose hope and feeling. The antagonists, who are indeed losing their sanity but not their sense of purpose, use it to get past guards and warding spells to assassinate people in plain sight. Lark says it can also be used to collapse distances and let people walk between places quickly... if they can bear it.

"One man who jumped from Lightsbridge to Nidra through unmagic lay in a fever for a year, raving. Later he wrote that his senses all went dead; he was trapped inside his own mind."


Live Action TV

  • In the Stargate series, the most powerful generators they use to run their advanced technology revolves around harvesting zero point energy, by using their zero point modules. Which they techno-babble explain by taking energy from space itself, they eventually run out of power somehow though... A lot of the show's pivotal plots involve finding or using these generators.
    • Zero Point Modules tap into Pocket Dimensions and drain the void-energy stuff from that Pocket Dimension. Each ZPM is connected to a different Pocket Dimension, which does eventually run dry.
      • They also try to harvest zero point energy from the universe itself and later an alternate universe, neither of which went very well due to tendancy to cause massive explosions.
      • Well, it wasn't so much the fact that it caused massive explosions (okay, maybe it was), but the fact that the zero-point energy extraction from an entire universe causes weird exotic particles, that defy the laws of physics, to be created. They can, among other things, cause a very large explosion (destroying 5/6ths of a solar system!), and rip a hole in the fabric of spacetime itself (destroying an entire reality).
  • The purple Core Medals in Kamen Rider OOO run on the desire of nothingness. Which is why it sought out The Hero Eiji, whose lack of desires allowed him to become OOO, and why Dr Maki, desiring an end to everything (i.e., making everything nothing) is a suitable vessel.
    • Furthermore, their powers work in the aforementioned way, split down the middle: Eiji's powers as Putotyra revolve around An Ice Person, while Maki's The End of the World as We Know It plans factor into his Yummies once he becomes a Greeed, as they annihilate people's desires.
  • In the Heroes season 3 episode Angels and Monsters, Noah and Sylar are sent after Canfield, a man who has the power to create "Vortexes" into which things disappear forever. Noah tries to make Canfield eliminate Sylar (who by this time has copied Claire's regeneration power, making him extremely difficult to kill). Canfield uses it to kill himself instead, refusing to become a murderer.


Tabletop Game

  • Dungeons & Dragons has several Prestige Classes that are based around the idea of using emptiness as a weapon, as well as the Binder PC class, who channel the power of entities that have been banished to nothingness, not to mention the infamous Sphere of Annihilation.
  • The Neverborn in Exalted. According to some theories, Creation's version of the Void wouldn't even exist if not for them. By extension, the Deathlords and the Abyssal Exalted. Interestingly, in Exalted, the Power of the Void is closely associated with Necromancy, to the point that anyone who can use one can generally use the other to some extent.
    • Needless to say, this is also true in Wraith: The Oblivion, where the force the Neverborn serve is tellingly called "Oblivion."
  • The Nephandi from Mage: The Ascension employ Qlippothic magic—whereas common Sphere/Sephirothic magic is altering and manipulating parameters of reality, Qlippothic magic is active negation and destruction of reality. An Akashic martial artist might use his knowledge of Correspondence[1] to leap over a distance of seven leagues. His Qlippothic counterpart would create a similar effect by destroying the space between him and his destination with a punch.[2] Sephirothic Prime is concerned with essence of existence. A Nephandus specializing in its Qlippothic counterpart can expel things from reality just as easily as a mage igniting a candlelight.
    • Mage: The Awakening has the Scelesti. The Abyss is a twisted, hateful reflection of reality created when some pretty significant magical screwups occurred and reality got some new holes torn in it. Scelesti are mages who have reshaped their souls to draw on the powers of the Abyss to corrupt spirits, negate magic (or make it go out of control), and generally make the world worse in any way they can.
  • Anima: Beyond Fantasy presents the Etrien Gnosos which is this trope with Face Monster Turn added; and played straight with Ildabaoth Veda (bonus points for being both a Creepy Child and a white haired pretty girl).
    • In the (currently in Spanish only) Arcana Exxet one of the subschools of magic (appropiately named Void) lets the player use the power of the Void.
  • The Dark Eldar in Warhammer 40,000 have access to a weapon called the Dark Lance, in the 5th edition, they have a flyer which has a beefed up version called the Void Lance, these Voidraven Bombers also have a bomb, called the Void Mine which first creates a protected sphere, to utterly annihilate everything in it.
  • "Void" is one of the types of heroes in Ascension: their abilities focus on removing your own cards from play, which is nifty for thinning out your deck.


Video Games

  • Void is the Japanese name for the Non-Elemental element in Legend of Dragoon. It's most prominently wielded by game anti-villain / anti-hero Lloyd.
  • Darth Nihilus from Knights of the Old Republic II: If his name doesn't say it all, he's also implied to be "void" and has potentially the ability to become a "black hole" for all sentient life.
    • The Exile too, is eventually revealed to be in a similar situation. You never really gained your connection to the Force back, and instead suck it from those around you through the Force bonds you create.
    • Another Obsidian RPG, Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer involves this as well. Akachi's soul became the spirit-eater curse after being ripped from the Wall of the Faithless, and subsequently seeks to consume everything in order to fill its own emptiness.
    • For that matter, void is also associated with yet another Obsidian (back when they were called Black Isle) protagonist, The Nameless One from Planescape: Torment. Because he is stripped of his mortality and has forgotten himself, The Nameless One is a void in the planes -- he cannot be found by the use of scrying magic or similar, and each time he dies another being in the multiverse dies in his place.
  • In Final Fantasy V, Exdeath's whole plan and goals revolve around his beloved Void. When he finally gets control of it, he manifests the power in the form of generating black hole-like portals into the Void, which he uses to engulf large chunks of continents, and he might be channeling the power of things trapped within the Void. In the end, the Void engulfs him and spits out an Omnicidal Maniac called Neo-Exdeath.
    • Similarly, the Cloud of Darkness from Final Fantasy III came from a void and wants to engulf the world in darkness dark world to reduce the world to nothing.
      • However, the two are very different takes on this trope: Exdeath appears o be attempting to wipe out everything, while Cloud Of Darkness seems to be a sort of mystical "immune response" created by the universe when a world has too much of either darkness or light, to balance things out and restart the cycle (admittedly, by killing everyone currently alive). When they meet up in Dissidia, each arrogantly announces that their understanding of the Void is the only correct one. Regardless, Voidshipping is a very popular Crack Pairing.
  • Xemnas from Kingdom Hearts is said to be attributed to the "element" of nothingness and repeatedly acknowledges it. He also refers to nothingness as The Void during his boss battle. However, his attacks manifest as Pure Energy, including barriers of energy and his signature Ethereal Blades. The closest to a "Void" attack is his desperate final attempt to kill Sora and Riku, where he pulls them into a black void and surrounds them with a field of Etheral Blades that fire like lasers at them.
  • StarCraft Dark Templar / Nerazim draw psionic power from The Void (essentially, space itself), as opposed to the Khalai Protoss, who use their own Hive Mind / Instrumentality link for power. Void-based abilities apparently include cloaking, trapping targets in a "Void Prison", and (for Zeratul, at least) short-range teleportation.
    • It's also worth noting that the combination of the two is very powerful and there's even a Dark Templar prophecy speaking of the "Twilight Deliverer" that signals a time of great peril for the Universe.
    • The Twilight Deliverer is bad news, but the Twilight Messiah is a mythological figure that is supposedly able to wield the powers of both Khala and Void in tandem and is a major force for good. What's more, the Messiah is supposedly cyclical, returning in a new form when it is needed. The (mostly Dark) protoss who espouse this theory are apt to hold that Tassadar (who did channel both back in StarCraft 1 to destroy the Overmind) was or is, depending on your interpretation a fulfillment of this prophecy.
  • League of Legends has the Void, a dimension which apparently scars the mind of all who look into it and contains sentient horrors ("Terror coming... Daddy coming..."). Void-powered characters are doom prophet Malzahar and obvious Protoss expy Kassadin, as well as the monsters Cho'Gath and Kog'Maw.
  • The Void element in Adventure Quest is different from all of the elements because monsters cannot have resistances to it. The rare ones that do are often unique and highly dangerous.
    • The Void Dragon is a particularly dangerous example. It uses Void element attacks against you, which is bad since there is no way for players to reduce Void damage. It can also absorb health every time you miss an attack. Void dragons even absorb Void damage to heal themselves. The only saving grace is that they take twice as much damage from standard elemental attacks. They also happen to look like Xenomorphs mixed with dragons.
    • The half-dragon mage Nythera from the sister game Dragon Fable not only has this power, but can purify those who have been corrupted by it.
  • Count Bleck and his minions in Super Paper Mario use this quite eagerly in their attempt to annihilate all of reality. This includes Luigi during his time Brainwashed into being Mr. L, so it's theorized that the Power of the Void is the source of Luigi's bizarre Negative Zone Final Smash in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
    • Count Bleck, meanwhile, utilizes this during his boss battle, throwing miniature black holes and creating a large void in an attempt to suck in the player close enough to damage them.
      • The results of a world that had been consumed by the black heart's void. It's a huge level with only black ground white sky and three small pieces of the previous world remaining. It's incredibly unsettling.
  • The Violet Wisps from the DS version of Sonic Colors can turn Sonic into a small black hole that sucks in small enemies and rings.
  • Nin 2 Jump: Namakura, the Big Bad, inserts the phrases "Emptiness is the form" and "Form is the emptiness" into his normal speech. He appears to be a Zen Buddha as well.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, Ahriman introduces himself as the God of the Void.


Web Comics

  • Homestuck takes place in an RPG Mechanics Verse where Void is one of the known elements, "the essence of lack or nothingness." Void is specifically an Aspect of destruction or obfuscation of knowledge and seems tied to the Furthest Ring. The Heroes of the Void seen so far all have used (or will use) their powers for passive Psychic Block Defense against scrying and omniscence, and the last of the three may be channeling it in her Fenestrated Portals, which seem to cut through the timeless void outside the universe.
  • Psi-Max, of Goblins, seems to be capable of invoking this power to create areas of pure oblivion. Interestingly, not only are the objects (and people!) that fall into these erased, they are retroactively removed from time- people remember a reality where they never existed, and seem to have no awareness that anything has changed.


Web Original

  • The villainous Void, from the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, has the power to send objects and creatures to an "endless black void" at will. He also teleports by traveling to this void and back.
  • Sailor Nothing has this as her power.
  • The Fear Mythos features the Quiet, which is perhaps the most dangerous of all the Fears. It is a vast, sentient nothingness that devours entire universes, and one day it will arrive in ours...
  • Kingdumb Hearts mocks this. Xemnas thrusts out his hand to demonstrate "the power of nothing," and nothing happens.


Western Animation

  • King Minus from a short animated sketch on Sesame Street, had the power to make things disappear by touching them.


Real Life

  • One reason for this trope's prevalence is that some sects of Zen Buddhism emphasize emptiness and void, especially emptying the mind.
  • Inverted in some theories about black holes in real life. In this case it's too much matter in a single place that causes a gravitational pull rather than the vacuum effect that is associated with a void.
  1. ↑ essentially space magic
  2. ↑ with the side effect being that everything in between cannot now ever be reached without powerful magic
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