*THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN CATALOGUED IN THE RECORDS OF THE IMPERIAL BUREAUCRACY UNDER UUID: 018c0d95-5283-7e6d-b4a5-f4d0c0a7e7c8 BY BUREAUCRAT AESCHYLA OF LASTVAULT* ## Introduction The Voidfaith is one of the galaxy's oldest religions, and one of its most popular as well. Adherents refer to themselves as "Singers" or, more properly, "Singers of the Distant Void", but the galaxy at large knows them as the Voidsingers. A full census of the faithful is impossible, given the Voidfaith's presence across nearly the entire galaxy, but even low estimates place the number in the mid to high trillions. That number is somewhat misleading, however, as the vast majority of Singers are laypeople. When the average citizen of the galaxy thinks of Voidsingers, they think of space stations built around singularities. They think of drone fleets billions strong commanded by a single once-human intellect. They think of mandala art made from stellar nurseries. The Voidfaith has a simple set of tenets, but countless philosophers have spent multi-millennial lives exploring their deeper mysteries and never touched the bottom. In the process of exploring those mysteries, the Voidsingers have discovered and created fantastical technology, waged bloody war against entire constellations, and repeatedly come within a hairsbreadth of extinction. While a full treatise on the Voidfaith has been attempted several times, most notably and successfully by Sage Zawila (*Archivist's Note: see record 018c0da0-fba1-7bbd-b161-196479876d30*), this document seeks only to provide a basic grasp of the faith and its tenets. ## History The Voidfaith, as near as anyone can tell, was founded shortly before the Celestial Empire. Given that the age of the Empire is itself hotly debated, this is often regarded as a somewhat less-than-helpful milestone, but historians often have to take what they can get. (*Archivist's Note: Saint Bureaucrat Aeschyla was somewhat infamous for the informal tone of her reports.*) Somewhere around a half a billion years before the start of the Imperial Calendar, a handful of what we'd now call Sages got together for a grand debate. This happened, or so we believe, on the planet of Höyük, which has since been eaten by the Leviathan's Corpse. Rough. Anyway, these Sages got together to argue about space itself, what they called "Pure Void." They weren't interested in the obscene power of quantum foam, or the different ways in which causality could be manipulated at the smallest scales. No, these Sages were debating something far more contentious: Why does nature abhor a vacuum? The debates raged for centuries. At least a third of the Sages present were killed and the planet Höyük was evacuated more than once on threat of superweapon deployment. When the bloodshed stopped and the broad strokes achieved consensus, the tenets of the Voidfaith were published for the first time in recognizable form. At the time, they were published under the title "The Song of the Void", which is where the Singers take their name. That original document has not survived to modernity, but the tenets themselves have been passed down and remain unchanged for as far back as we have records. While the actual meaning of each tenet is, of course, a matter of debate, it is generally agreed that each tenet is a simple introduction masking a far more complex (and often self-contradictory) idea. The simplest, most obvious example is found in the third tenet. The Sages tell us we can only understand the "greatest secret" of the void after all other illusions fall away, but none of the other tenets mentions illusions at all. Perhaps the original document held more information, but no one can say for sure. Regardless, a great many kindly, wise old monks have roasted one another alive over what counts as an illusion. ## The Tenets of the Voidfaith There is no true nature. Nothing can be mandated. What must be is brought forth by the void without commandment. This is the true nature of the void. Formless and empty. Rigid and infinitely dense. This is the true shape of the void. The greatest secret of the void can only be understood when all other illusions fall away.