Nothing
Ethereal 'God' of Atheism
Ethereal Forces: 3 Intelligence:
8 Precision: 4
Celestial Forces: 3 Will:
7 Perception:
5
Elements: Emotions (Dispassion) (primary);
Information (Perspective) (secondary)
Affinities: Emotions (Dispassion) (strong); Books
(Moderate); Deception (Moderate)
Skills: Dream-Shaping/3, Dodge/3, Emote/3,
Fighting/3, Knowledge/3 (logic)
Songs: Charm (Ethereal/4), Motion (Celestial/3)
Dread: Revealing its existence to any mortal/3
(3pt/level)
Image: Ever have a dream where you knew that
something was there, but when you looked at it, it wasn't... but you knew that
it was still hanging around, somehow?
Well, there you go.
It makes perfect sense on the ethereal plane and absolutely none on the
corporeal, which is as it should be.
About the only thing that Nothing has going for it
is that it's effectively immune to Assumption combat challenges, despite the
steady Essence flow. There are very few
ethereals out there that want to volunteer to be under constant attack from the
Host, the Tsayadim and just about every other ethereal out there, after all:
there have been many Nothings, and they invariably have a lifespan measurable
in months.
Of course, one might wonder why there's been even a
single Nothing in the first place, as a god of atheism seems
counterintuitive. Well, it goes like
this: a portion of humanity considers themselves to be atheists. Of that group, there is a further division
between those who do not believe in God (or gods) and those who believe that
there is no God (or gods): the entire 'absence of evidence' versus 'evidence of
absence' thing, in other words. It's
the latter subgroup that is important, in this context: they're the ones that
are fueling Nothing's existence, as they are actually passing on Essence to it
through their belief in the nonexistence of any deity.
Unfortunately, to semi-quote Terry Pratchett,
Nothing lives in a universe where deities go around and throw rocks through
atheists' windows.
Nothing has no allies, or even real neutrals. The Tsayadim find the idea of a god of
atheists to be a calculated insult; so does the Host, really, except that
they're slightly more polite about it.
The other ethereals consider the very existence of Nothing to be a
threat to their own continued survival.
Admittedly, this is not really true, as the ethereals are suffering more
from a general lack of belief than from active disbelief, but since when has
logic gotten in the way of a good general loathing? Besides, most ethereals live in quiet terror of fading - and
Nothing's regular mode of existence looks too much like that condition to be
anything but disquieting. As for
Hell... well, the Habbalah at least are predisposed to loathe the ethereal on
sight and the rest of the Horde have their own reasons for encouraging regular
ethereals in their quite irrational hatred of the spirit. Then there's the wrinkle of Nothing's Dread:
it literally cannot hope to openly encourage worshippers (to use the technical
term), as said act of encouragement runs directly counter to its Image. The best that it can hope for is to enter
individual dreamscapes and obliquely encourage existing tendencies towards an
active disbelief in any deity.
This only rarely works, and is fairly risky.
This should hopefully explain why there have been so
many Nothings: they tend to be destroyed with a regularity that would do credit
to a metronome. When the current one is
gone, a new one crops up fairly soon.
Fairly reliable rumor suggests that new Nothings are formed from faded
spirits with Image problems: indeed, some healing-oriented ethereals have
classified Nothing as a particularly disturbing, nigh-incurable disease. Whether or not this is true is up to
individual GMs, but bear in mind that trying to find a cure for an ethereal
infected with Nothing can make for an interesting adventure.
As for Nothing's personality... well, considering
that it's fueled by people who don't believe in it (not to mention not having
much time for personal development), it'd be lucky to have one. As Nothing can not considered to be
particularly lucky by any reasonable measuring system, it generally displays a
basic sentience and not much else. The
'not much else' part tends to support the hypothesis that new Nothings come
from faded ethereals: sometimes a flicker of what might have been the original
personality matrix appears for a moment, apparently at the cost of great pain
to Nothing. Most ethereals agree that
seeing this happen causes them to feel two specific and distinct
reactions. The first is a curious
mixture of disquietude and pity.
The second is a sudden and fierce need to find a
nice, heavy rock to throw.