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Art and Nature of the Void: What does it look like and What IS it?

Dreamspitter·9/18/2017, 6:27:52 AM·9 votes·2,383 views

"The Void is a nightmarish dimension said to exist outside space and time, where terrifying living weapons were wrought to win an ancient and long-since ended war. No-one truly understands how the Void came into existence, but tales of its terrible denizens have wormed their way into the dream consciousness of almost every culture’s legends, creation myths and dark folktales. Those few scattered grimoires and madmen that dare speak of the Void at all, speak of it as an infinite realm of unfettered creation, tortured landscapes of crazed organic machinery, magical weapon-looms and mountainous flesh-forges."

What would that EVEN look like?

I would love to see Riot do a video or animation, or even a comic where a character is in a landscape slipping into the Void. I sort of imagine the artwork of H.R. Giger + Animation of Cyriak + The Dogscape + DMT. Lots of DMT. Now on the one hand I want to imagine the dimension itself as full of impossible things. But at the same time, the description makes it sound decidedly corporeal, and living. From all the things that we have seen come out of it, purple or pink seems it would actually be a dominant color -albeit colors might shift and change. We're told that the void is 'dark' even though void magic has a distinct spooky glow to it.

At the same time, look at what it did to Kassadin. He's a rarer example of something coming out of it, and looking distinctly cold and technological. The little lore we have says that the things within the void were 'living weapons' made by some other civilization. In some ways this perhaps plays into Xenomorph/The Thing like themes, and Giger's biomechanics. What seems like an interesting (if not original) idea would be depicting the Void itself consuming something, not unlike the Creep/Blight mechanic of Starcraft/Warcraft.

Another question is...what is it like actually moving through the Void? Some things like Vel'koz actually float freely so the environment could be any kind of open space. But we're told of mountainous forges and looms weaving weapons long after the war has ended. So their are massive edifices. Most things seem to have legs, and they don't move REALLY fast or slow so we'd think it has 'normal' gravity, and some kind of atmosphere since some things can have wings.

Now. Let's look at that Nami comic from a couple weeks ago.....

Nami runs into....some very weird fractal stuff.

https://i.imgur.com/rZ7cDNr.png

She loses her light source, and has to brave the pitch dark and cold in which the monsters that plagued them thrive.

https://i.imgur.com/MALYL1R.png

Then she discovers a cavern, that's strange with the same fractal creature characteristics. It's also very purple.

https://i.imgur.com/uR4PT4G.png

She says it's beautiful beyond all words....but also nightmarish. And then would you guess what?

https://i.imgur.com/W4XddVY.png

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GoMadFromTheRevelation

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThirdEye

He talks about a "world beneath the world" which I don't quite think is a sort of hollow earth concept. I think it's more a world, outside of the world. Other possible connections could include the backgrounds of both Gnar and Lissandra . The artwork we do have of the Watchers feels cyclopean, and void like.

https://i.imgur.com/k1mzN87.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/aIu6CLa.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/xH79oEg.jpg

Alsp remember that Malzahar's background tells us "When Malzahar's cracked feet finally failed him, he found himself kneeling at the base of a bizarre crumbling obelisk. Beyond it lay the alien geometry of a ruined city and the giant decaying idols of dark and horrific gods." This implies there are indeed statues of powerful void entities treated as gods. The Frozen Watchers seem to fit quite well as an incarnation of that.

I sort of feel that 'The Void' tends to leak into our world, especially close to the "deep" places. The bottom of the ocean abyss, the mountains of madness, the ruins of cities so infamous as to be spoken of only in whispers.

12 Comments

Velzard of Koz9/18/2017, 10:02:41 AM2 votes

I think the fractal stuff is seaweed mutated due to exposure to the Void. Similar to how Malzahar (who also has extra eyes due to holes in his cape), Kassadin and Rushoo ( and Kassadin's daughter :^) ) got mutated due to exposure to it, it's possible all living forms can. Even a seaweed.

OneDeadPixel9/18/2017, 9:57:54 AM1 votes

We know for certain that there is some kind of greater deity similar in power to Aurelion Sol who is responsible for the void rifts and likely commands the voids denizens and is the source of its corruption.

I think Riot confirmed that the watchers are separate entity from the void a long time ago after similar speculation on the part of the community.

Whyte Lyon9/18/2017, 7:38:12 AM1 votes

I'm curious about that "weird fractal stuff" too.

To me it looks like purple energy just surrounded by warped seaweed. If that happens to be the case then I would conclude that the horror is definitely not from the Void, only a product of exposure to the breach? However the story doesn't stop to ponder on such a question, so it's anyone's guess I suppose.

Which brings me to my other curiosity from the Nami comic; the lack of Void creatures occupying the breach, it seemed pretty dormant if you ask me. Which strikes me as very odd for how close Nami would get to the epicenter. Yet apparently this breach has been a treacherous zone, spitting out hordes of monsters for hundreds of years. But now it's just guarded by alien seaweed idly waiting around, which I can't imagine is a threat to the Marai. And then apparently the abundance of Leviathans that once roamed the area weren't good enough to be void corrupted, just eaten?

Like am I suppose to assume that the Void starved and/or bailed on that breach because of the Moon Stone's repellent effect?

Camille Ferrøs9/18/2017, 9:12:07 PM1 votes

The Watchers are not related to the Void judging from their official and unpopular look.

Rebonack9/19/2017, 4:02:27 AM1 votes

I suspect Riot's vision of what the Void is has changed radically since the days of Rek, who was our last Void champ as it happens. The old Void critters are all basically bug aliens when you get down to it, with Vel covering the niche of mandatory octopus alien.

But you look at how Void beasties are described in things like Diana's story? A constantly warping, only tentatively physical abomination with more in common with The Thing than your average Tyranid? That's a pretty huge departure. And we see that same utterly alien design in the whatever the hell that is that assaulted Nami in her comic. You can unquestioningly get a Void 'feel' from that monster, but there's virtually no earthly context to find for it. Maybe the closest thing I can think of would be a basket star, and those things are already super-weird.

One way or the other, I suspect that when Riot does their big Void event, we might see some major visual updates to most if not all of the Void monsters to really drive home just how utterly other they are.

Kloqdq9/19/2017, 3:35:57 PM1 votes

I think it's quite clear that many aspects of league do in fact link back to the void. When many of the higher powers are mentioned they often all have a common aspect about them and that is hints and connections to the void. Targon being the largest connection to it as we've seen.

SpecterVonBaren9/18/2017, 3:05:41 PM1 votes

Keep in mind when theorizing what things look like from the Void that we can't use Kha-Zix as an example in terms of his physical abilities or features other than his ability to take aspects of the things he consumes, since, because of that ability, we don't know how much or how little of him is what he was like before he came to Runeterra and how much he got because of him consuming other creatures.