So the more as the Letters Page goes on, the more I find myself being extremely curious about the Void, as it seems to be the one thing in Sentinels that's both very important/relevant and yet AFAIK we have very little concrete information about it.
One thing in particular that fuels my curiosity is how Sentinels seems to treat the concept of the Void very differently from how other stories tend to treat it.
Usually the Void is pretty unequivocably a Bad Thing. The Void is where you encounter evil, darkness, destruction, chaos, shadow magic, etc. Heck, in Greek Mythology the "god" Chaos is specifically the anthropomorphization of the Void Before Creation. Any character powered by the Void is going to be either your villain or a dark anti-hero at best.
But in Sentinels that doesn't seem to be the case. We have quite a few heroes or villains-turned-hero powered somehow by the Void who don't usually seem any darker than any other non-Void powered hero. The one hero specifically stated as being a champion of the Void is an agent of Order rather than Chaos. The agent of Chaos and Destruction who later seeks power from the Void seems in one of her teased cards to turn more towards creation as a result. The one member of the Void Guard who seemed particularly corrupted by their power turned out to actually be possessed by GloomWeaver. We hear about entities in or from the Void who are bad in some way, but they seem to be just "bad entities from the Void", rather than bad because they're from the Void. The Void itself seems pretty neutral, all things considered; neither especially good or bad, just extremely powerful.
I originally assumed this was because the Void was merely a shorthand for being the source of all magic/mystical power in the SotM multiverse, but then in Nightmist's Letters Page it was said her initial source of magic was from something other than the Void, so I sort of threw my hands up a little bit at that point.
The OblivAeon mission card which seems to possibly depict the former (as in dead) Virtuosos being made into "voidforms" to help the mortal world heroes raises even more questions about the whole matter, if you ask me.
being a champion of the Void is an agent of Order rather than Chaos
I might be mistaken, but I think this is an erroneous assumption actually. Argent Adept channels energy from the void, true. But no where that I know states that he is it's champion and that the Void favors Adepts use of its energies over other uses. We know very little about his relationship to the Void in general. To me it's more likely that Argent siphons and channels energies from the Void instead of a relationship where the Void itself chooses to grant Argent with those abilities. It doesn't seem that Argent fights for the Void I guess is a better way to put it.
It's also unclear exactly what the Void is, moreso, if it is its own entity with wants/needs/desires in an abstract sense or just another realm of magical power amongs the myriad others like the realm of Discord. The Void could be the plane of existense that epitomizes the Order/Chaos dicotomy in the multiverse, but that seems insiffiencet if not just outright untrue given that the Letters Page has talked quite a bit about Faultless, whom we are to understand is exactly that being in the cosmic hierarchy (though the possibility remains that Faultless could come from the Void).
We also know Dark Visionary, or at least, the aspect that latched onto Vanessa Long, spends a great deal of time in the Void (pictured specifically on Hammer's incap art from VotM) and that she also retreats there after being expunged from Visionary. We know too that other beings can pull from the Void somehow, as seen with Akash's promo card in Oblivaeon. How that actually comes to pass is likely a story that will come with time from the Letters Page.
What is also interesting about the Void is that there is only 1 in the multiverse. Whereas, for instance, there is a Realm of Discord in each multiverse, the Void is a shared space between all of them, making it a pretty unique place. I feel this is no small detail either as it a link that all realities share.
I am very much looking forward to a Letters Page episode on the Void itself, though I expect a ton of information on it during the Argent Adept episode. Even as a PTer who has seen the forthcoming Nexus of the Void environment deck, I can safely say that I was left with far more story questions than answers (as is the case with every deck >G has ever printed) and I'm excited to hear about it.
It was an Occam's Razor assumption, admittedly. Something chooses the Virtuoso that seems to be not the Virtuoso themself, and it seemed simplest to assume it was the Void itself or at least something related directly to the Void.
Also Akash'Thriya's bio implies her as making some sort of pact with the Void, where she'll have to "answer to the Void" afterwards.
Actually, it's kind of interesting. Akash'Bhuta and NightMist are described as giving something of themselves in exchange for power from the Void. Scholar and the Void Guard seem to be tangibly changed by their own brushes with the Void, as also Akash is implied to be. But Argent seems to neither have to give anything of himself nor is majorly changed by the Void (by his new job, sure, but not by the Void itself).
Considering a major theme of magic in general is usually that of equal exchange, the fact that Argent hasn't seemed to have to pay the piper yet (yes, pun intended) seems possibly significant, though significant how I don't know.
The Void Guard were changed by OblivAeon shards not the Void. They are listed in the bio we got from the KS that they hold back the Void but that isn't what caused their change. Now OblivAeon himself could be part of the Void too we don't know.
OblivAeon wants the void all to himself. The void is the power that fuels everything, and the Multiverse draws a lot of power. Power that OblivAeon wants for himself.
He's effecively trying to take over the power supply by going into everyone's house and braking it so they stop drawing power. then he can go back to the power plant and all the power will be his.
I may be entirely wrong, but I got the impression somewhere (and I have no idea where because I look at a LOT of sentinels stuff for the wiki...) that the fact that the Multiverse exists, and the infinite possiblities exist, is what angers OblivAeon. He wants things to be simple, one path, one way, but the Multiverse makes it so that is not the case - there is no true decision, choice, or 'win/lose' because there is always another multiverse where it was different. And that offends him. So he is going to collapse it.
In a way, even if the Heroes defeat him, OblivAeon still won.
As to the original point of the post, the void as we know is the space between Multiverse realities. It is outside the multiverse and is the same realm for all of them (unlock say, the Realm of Discord, which each reality has its own version of the Realm - the Void is singular, and only exists once but simulaneously connected to everything) I think that as a source of energy it is unparalled, and thats why so many Villains seek it and heroes defend it.
I guess I wasn't just crazy, then, when over on Reddit I commented once that I thought the Void reminded me perhaps of the Superflow from Marvel.
Though while that covers things structurally, I'm still intrigued by what purpose the Void serves from a thematic standpoint.
(Like for instance in Marvel, the Superflow is also structurally the emptiness between the multiverse, but thematically it's "the place where people go when they dream", and multiple characters use it to traverse reality(ies) in various ways as a result.)
The Marvel cosmos has so many different layers to it its hard to keep them straight. Superflow is definitivly one of them, and I think there is like 4-5 others (jeez, I'm reading the Ultimates and they juuuust covered this a few issues ago). It could be something in a similar vein, but I think there is much more going on. It's a more complex place than that of the Marvel cosmos layers for certain.
Thats usually how power goes… those with a lot of it often crave more.
But I agree that his motivations go beyond just power… I think what he lacks is total control. He is one being across many multiverses… of he collapses them all he can control it all. For that, he needs to tap I to the primordial Void.
I had a big post that got deleted accidently and I'm not sure if I'm up to trying to recreate it.
Short version: The motivation of seeking power for a being who is already at the top of the cosmic food chain is lazy and I'll give >G the benefit of the doubt in their ability to tell more interesting stories. Unless, of course, he isn't the top of said chain. (insert 3 large paragraphs of theory about The Host).
Ohh i wanna joing in this conversation. I love Void talk.
I belive he menthiod that the void is how time travel happends. So Chorno Ranger and La Capitan travel though the void I assume. Even though the Void is "neutral", it is called a curse by La Comodora, Akash and Nightmist "mist" power is also called a curse. It is a place of power but Not sure If it has a mid of its own. Unless it is OblivAeon's realm and it his power that lets it exsist. This would explain why there is no more time travel or dimention travel after he is defented. (insert tons of specialtion about this)
Hey Foote Can you dig up your old foote note about the void? I wanna see how of it is right with what we know now.
Correction: It was said in NightMist's Letters Page that her initial power/curse was not from the Void. She later drew extra power from the Void and became more magical than mortal, but that wasn't the original source of her curse.
Otherwise, though, yeah, it kind of goes back to the idea that the Void–like most magic–seems to require an exchange from people in return for granting power. Which is part of why I think Argent is specifically the champion of the Void, since he's the only one who doesn't seem to be locked into such an exchange.
(Of course there's always the incredibly ominous possibility that there is a price that he'll be expected to pay sooner or later.)
I'm still not convinced that the Dark Conductor isn't the Carbon Adept rather than Anthony himself. Guess we'll find out for sure either when that variant hits the digital version or whenever Argent's Letters Page comes around, whichever comes first.
That last is a good point, though. I have so many questions about how exactly the instruments work, but it would seem that if nothing else a Virtuoso ever using too much power at once effectively exacts a cost of limiting all future power.
(Especially since it's implied that Anthony is the first Virtuoso to ever hit upon searching out/summoning more than one instrument, so for any previous Virtuoso they'd be limiting all their future power if they did such a thing.)