Mark of the Void

The Mark of the Void is a lasting mark on the soul borne by those whom Voidborn have touched, in the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"). In a fight in a tunnel beneath Aquila, the touch of these beings drew the moisture and life out of the body without opening a wound; when one passed its hand through the doctor Bruno's, his body grew cold and he seemed to thin, and another rose along a wall to touch Sticks. The touch was likened to the deaths found earlier at the Clearing of the broken statue, perhaps the same kind of effect or a stronger one.¹²³

Nature

Those touched were marked. The strength drained from them came back with rest, but the mark remained until a cure could be found, and it leaves them more open to the Voidborn's power over fear and will; it is no sickness, and Bruno's power to cure disease does not touch it. Fauna, whom the beings never touched, bears no mark. The mark lay on the souls of three of the band, the heavier marks on others they had met were no coincidence, and it left an influence aimed at control; whether its purpose is to draw the marked to some side remains a possibility only.⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸

The mark leaves no visible black stain.⁹

The priest's reading

At Sticks's request, Travis found a priest willing to look at the mark in secret. The priest gave the three marked a foul-tasting mixture, laid his hand on Bruno's brow and prayed until his own eyes went wholly black. He said that he saw a strong, deep curse, not easily broken, perhaps from contact with a very powerful person or a dangerous being, which his own strength could not lift and whose effects he knew no way to ease. He likened the leaning of soul and will it causes to a magnet or a slope, did not think it deadly, and thought it not contagious but perhaps passed on to children. He advised morning prayer, avoiding the same source again, and, failing a very powerful cleric, seeking a scholar who knew its source, since knowledge might serve better than sheer power.^{1011121314151617}

He also told how, in old wars, some of the essence of The Dark One had splashed onto the god of luck, so that the other gods came to distrust him, and warned that the marked might likewise be seen as untrustworthy.¹⁸

The deeper mark

The mercenary mage Manfred, found gravely wounded, bore a mark like the band's but woven far deeper, like runes carved into body and soul; the band's lighter marks were woven too. His mark and theirs resonated, and the thing within him stirred at their presence. When Bruno reached out to heal him, darkness closed around Bruno's sight and fear made him draw back, and Manfred felt the thing within him pulled towards Bruno; later, when they shook hands, something in each seemed to pull at the other.^192021222324

After a fight on the road, as the tabaxi Kuraks was seized by a sharp cramp, Bruno, Finli and Sticks felt a lighter, similar pain in their backs, near the back of the heart; Fauna did not.²⁵

Scholars on the Void

Scholars hold that Voidborn are among the rarest of beings, and that no scholar in the history of Teneris has gathered enough knowledge of them to draw sound conclusions.²⁶