---
description: "\"To speak with nothing is to risk becoming nothing. Each word exchanged with the void costs a memory, a certainty, a piece of who you were. We pay this price gladly, for someone must translate the apocalypse.\" —First Void Speaker Elara Null-Tongue, before her final conversation"
article_type: full
taxonomyContext: This taxonomy contains magical traditions entries for this world.
---
# Void Speakers
*"To speak with nothing is to risk becoming nothing. Each word exchanged with the void costs a memory, a certainty, a piece of who you were. We pay this price gladly, for someone must translate the apocalypse."*
—First Void Speaker Elara Null-Tongue, before her final conversation
## The Linguists of Oblivion
Born from the desperate need to understand the Nullity's intent, Void Speakers practice the most dangerous of all magical arts: direct communication with the force that unmakes meaning. Unlike [[The Void-Touched Syndicate]] who merely trade in void-touched goods, or [[Elena Voidtouched]] who was changed by exposure, Void Speakers actively seek dialogue with nothingness itself.
The tradition began during [[The Meaning Wars]], when philosopher-mage Elara discovered that the proto-Nullity manifestations weren't random—they responded to certain thought patterns. Through painstaking experimentation that cost her three fingers, her left eye's ability to see color, and every memory of her mother, she developed the First Vocabulary: thirteen concepts that the void recognizes.
## The Practice of Absence
Becoming a Void Speaker requires:
**The Emptying**: Aspirants must surrender cherished beliefs, creating mental space for void-concepts
**Silence Training**: Years learning to think in "negative space," understanding through absence
**Reality Anchoring**: Partnering with [[Fiscal Paladins]] or [[Reality Auditors]] who prevent total dissolution
**The First Word**: Speaking a single void-concept and surviving the response
Void Speakers work in cells of three: the Speaker who communicates, the Anchor who maintains their existence, and the Scribe who records translations before meaning fades. Sessions occur in specially prepared chambers lined with [[The Certainty Forge]]'s truth-steel, though even these precautions sometimes fail.
*From a recovered Scribe's notation:*
```
SPEAKER: "Why do you hunger?"
VOID: [UNTRANSLATABLE—sensation of never having existed]
SPEAKER: "Is satiation possible?"
VOID: [CONCEPT: All-things-becoming-wasn't, presented as inevitability/mercy/love]
SPEAKER: "What would remain?"
VOID: [Scribe's note: Speaker began laughing, couldn't stop. Session terminated.]
```
## The Translations
Through terrible sacrifice, Void Speakers have established:
- The Nullity experiences time backward, remembering futures that won't happen
- It considers existence a temporary error in the natural state of un-being
- It may not be malevolent but rather expressing a fundamentally alien form of compassion
- The void "speaks" in concepts that require dismantling sanity to comprehend
[[Prophet-Accountant Lysander]] worked closely with Void Speakers, using their translations to predict Nullity behavior through mathematical models. His disappearance occurred shortly after a Speaker reported the void had "noticed the calculations and found them amusing."
## The Speaking Sickness
Extended practice inevitably leads to "Void Tongue"—a condition where Speakers begin communicating primarily in absence. They'll enter rooms by not entering them, answer questions with meaningful silence, and eventually fade into conversational shadows. [[The Bank of Lost Things]] maintains a ward specifically for terminal Speakers, preserving their last coherent thoughts.
Most disturbing are reports from [[The Quantum Garden]] of plants responding to Void Speaker presence—wilting into more beautiful forms, blooming absence where flowers should be. As current First Speaker Thomis Half-There warns: *"We are becoming the void's vocabulary. When it speaks through us completely, the conversation ends."*
---
*Entry in Magical Traditions taxonomy*
