Voidstalker (Rough Copy)

Introduction

The Rifts bleed nightmares.
And the Voidstalkers bleed the nightmares dry.

They are not knights, nor scholars, nor priests.
They do not seek honor. They do not crave salvation. They do not hope for victory.
They exist for one purpose:

Contain the Riftborn.
Erase the infection.
Protect the Real.

Born from desperation during the first Rift incursions, Voidstalkers are the invisible blade at the throat of oblivion.
Where others see wonder beyond the portal gates, Voidstalkers see only the poison of the Old Gods festering in the cracks of reality.

They are neither fully mages, nor fully warriors, nor fully rangers.
They are severed from the ordinary weave of the world — sharpened by raw Rift-magic, tempered by shadows, and honed against the nightmares between stars.

They do not seek fame.
They do not accept praise.
They leave no witnesses when they fail.

They are the silent architects of survival — and the last line between existence and annihilation.

The Cost of Vigilance

To become a Voidstalker is to abandon comfort.
To embrace a life where every breath might be your last, unremembered.

Their power is drawn not from safe study or inherited bloodlines, but from the Severance — a brutal rite that severs part of their soul from the mortal skein, allowing them to see Rift distortions, feel the creeping infection of the Void, and strike before reality tears open.

But Severance demands a price.

• Emotions grow thin, stretched over an endless horizon of silence.

• Dreams twist into hunting grounds where old horrors return, night after night.

• Relationships wither, for who could love a soul that no longer fully exists in the world it protects?

A Voidstalker learns to smile less, speak less, and hope less.

For hope is a weakness the Rift can smell.

The Heart of Power

The power of a Voidstalker flows from two inexorable forces:

• Intelligence — to comprehend the alien geometries of the Rift, the chaotic languages of the Old Gods, and the scent of magic before it can twist into horror.

• Dexterity — to move like a shadow given purpose, slipping through walls of enemy flesh and unraveling spells before they take hold.

Without cunning, a Voidstalker dies blind.
Without speed, a Voidstalker dies slow.

Both are needed to hunt what lurks between the fractures of the world.

The Silent Creed

"We are the wall unseen.
We are the breath unvoiced.
We are the knife unsheathed.
When the world forgets the cost of survival,
We pay it again."

Every Voidstalker swears the Silent Creed upon completion of the Severance — though none speak it aloud.
It is burned into their essence, a silent song that threads through every action, every kill, every sacrifice.

It binds them not to nation, not to crown, not to kin.
It binds them to the defense of reality itself.

And when they fall — as all eventually do — the Creed passes on, wordless but eternal, to the next soul brave or foolish enough to walk the same endless hunt.

Origins & Severance

The Voidstalkers did not arise from heroism.
They were born from catastrophe.

When the first true Rifts split Aetheria’s sky — when monsters from a thousand forgotten hells poured into the world — kings, mages, and armies collapsed before they could even name the threat.

It was the Severed who turned the tide.
Those few who, in desperation, cut themselves away from the tapestry of the Real, sacrificing a piece of their own existence to walk the thresholds unseen, to track Riftborn anomalies by scent and sound that no untainted mortal could perceive.

They were the first Voidstalkers.
Not honored.
Not celebrated.
Reviled. Feared. Whispers on the wind. Ghosts blamed for the tremors left in their wake.

Yet without them, Aetheria would have already drowned under endless tides of nightmare.

Severance was not designed.
It was discovered.
And it cannot be undone.

The Purpose of the Voidstalkers

Voidstalkers serve no king, no temple, no Order of Magic.
Their loyalty lies to one cause alone:

The integrity of the Real.

They exist to:

• Hunt Riftborn anomalies — creatures and entities spawned, mutated, or tainted by exposure to Void energies.

• Track unstable Rifts — detecting fractures invisible to mortal senses and either stabilizing or destroying them before they can expand.

• Assassinate Rift-touched beings — individuals unknowingly infected by Void corruption who may, without intervention, birth new portals or horrors.

• Contain magical outbreaks — where spellcraft frays the edge of existence.

They are not healers.
They are not architects.
They are not saviors.

They are the blade that quietly bleeds away infection before it festers.

They are necessary.

And necessity leaves no room for mercy.

The Birth of the Clades

As Voidstalkers multiplied, three distinct Clades — philosophical and tactical schools — emerged among them.

Each Clade embodies a different method of combating the Rift's corruption:

• The Umbravex: Walkers-between, masters of shadow-folding, assassination, and the instantaneous severing of anomalies before they mature.

• The Riftbane Pact: Hunters who bond with creatures born of the Rift's edge — Rift Hounds and other unstable beasts — turning the enemy's mutations against it.

• The Eidolons of the Last Breath: Masters of anti-magic ambush, warping localized fields of reality itself to trap, dispel, and annihilate Void energies before they can root.

The Clades do not war against each other — but neither do they collaborate easily.
Each sees the others as half-measures, necessary evils, or risks barely tolerated for the greater good.

To join a Clade is to accept a philosophy of survival — and an inevitable death in service to it.

The Scar of Severance

Every Voidstalker bears the Scar of Severance — not a wound of flesh, but a wound of being.

It manifests differently in each:

• Some bear black veins that shimmer faintly under Riftlight.

• Some lose their reflection in mirrors.

• Some grow cold to the touch, their body temperature never fully returning to mortal norms.

• Some find their shadow twitching a moment out of sync with their movements.

But always, the Scar is there — a visible, undeniable brand that marks them as something Other.

They are still mortal.
But only mostly.

The Rift remembers those who Severed themselves.

And it hungers for them most of all.

Masters of the Rift Pulse

The Rift sings to those who listen.

Not with music, but with tremors beneath perception:
A Pulse that echoes in the marrow of those who have tasted Severance.

Voidstalkers are not merely trackers of anomalies.
They are the living barometers of reality’s unraveling.

The Pulse manifests as:

• A low, ever-present vibration felt in the gut.

• Flashes of instinctual certainty about when and where Rift energies thin the veil.

• Sudden chills or whispers before a Riftborn entity phases into view.

• A heightened sense of "wrongness" that can locate hidden threats otherwise imperceptible.

No machine, no spell, no scrying mirror can detect the breach of the Rift as quickly — or as intimately — as a Voidstalker attuned to the Pulse.

But this gift is a double-edged blade:
Constant exposure to the Pulse erodes sanity, memories, and even time itself if left unchecked.

Thus, Voidstalkers must learn not only to wield their senses —
but to survive them.

Void Magic and Reality Folding

Voidstalkers do not "cast" spells like traditional arcanists.
They fold the skin of reality — tearing, warping, or stitching it momentarily to gain advantage against foes.

This art is called Reality Weaving.

It includes:

• Phase Stride: Blinking through paper-thin tears in the Real, reappearing behind targets unseen.

• Silence of the Rift: Snuffing sound, light, and even thought in a localized pocket, rendering an area deaf, blind, and disoriented.

• Tethercut: Disrupting a creature’s metaphysical anchors, preventing teleportation, regeneration, or dimensional retreat.

• Shadow Branding: Marking an enemy’s essence so they bleed Rift energy, making them easier to track and more vulnerable to Void attacks.

Reality Weaving is not a science.
It is intuition, honed by agony.

Too much folding risks Riftburn —
the irreversible corruption of the Voidstalker’s own flesh and mind.

Thus, every weave is a wager.

Every fold is a scar.

Signature Techniques

Across all Clades, certain arts have become synonymous with Voidstalker legend:

• The Veilstep: The hallmark movement of masters — a motion so fluid it seems to blur the boundary between presence and absence.

• Nullfang Strike: A melee assault charged with anti-magical resonance, shattering shields, abjurations, and enchantments on contact.

• Soul-Tether Chains: Reality anchors forged in combat, binding Riftborn enemies and dragging them bodily back into material space to be slain.

• Shadowpierce Mark: A glyph burned onto a target’s shadow; as long as the mark remains, the target can never fully hide, teleport, or conceal their presence.

These techniques are taught not through instruction —
but through ordeal.

A Voidstalker does not learn these abilities.

They survive them.

Paths of the Stalker

Upon proving themselves capable of resisting Rift corruption, a Voidstalker chooses a Path — a permanent declaration of how they will serve Aetheria’s defense.

Each Path is distinct, unyielding, and perilous:

Path of the Riftbane Pact

(Beastbinders of the Void)

Riftbane Stalkers forge desperate alliances with Rift-touched beasts — taming creatures of pure nightmare through will and savage bondcraft.

• They hunt alongside Rift Hounds, spectral predators born from the edge of reality.

• They become as much predator as their companions — instinctively hunting, harrying, and cornering Riftborn prey.

• Some whisper that Riftbane masters eventually shed their last tether to humanity, becoming something altogether... Other.

"I do not hunt alone. The Rift itself has sworn me blood and fang."

Path of the Eidolon Blade

(Silent Cutters of Reality)

Eidolon Stalkers are the assassins that nightmares fear.

• They walk the lines between Real and Rift as easily as others cross a room.

• Their strikes fold localized reality, striking foes through barriers, walls, and wards.

• At the apex of their mastery, they can erase attacks mid-air, folding space so that projectiles or spells vanish harmlessly into nothing.

"I do not strike from shadows. I strike from places that were never meant to exist."

Path of the Umbravex

(Sorcerers of the Folded Veil)

The Umbravex Stalkers are masters of Reality Weaving — part arcanist, part phantom.

• They sculpt the battlefield with weaves of silence, blindness, inversion, and collapse.

• Ambush is their art, but not through stealth alone — through disbelief itself.

• The greatest Umbravex can even invert a Rift temporarily, turning it into a prison that traps Riftborn inside a pocket of nullspace.

"Reality is a lie agreed upon by the blind. We are the awakening."

Equipment and Iconography

Voidstalkers are not burdened by armies of gear or vaults of relics.
They carry only what the Pulse demands — tools shaped by necessity, perfected through loss.

Their equipment bears the unmistakable stain of the Rift:

• Veilthread Cloaks: Garments woven from spider-silk and Rift-shadow.
  They shimmer like oil on water, blurring the wearer's edges, making detection by mundane or magical means far harder.

• Foldsteel Blades: Forged in crucibles exposed to Riftstorms.
  These weapons do not simply cut — they unmake.
  A Foldsteel dagger doesn't bleed a foe; it erases the space between flesh and bone, leaving wounds that resist healing.

• Nullbond Shackles: Bands of cold iron laced with frozen Void essence.
  They clamp onto Riftborn prey, cutting them off from extradimensional energies, preventing teleportation or regeneration.

• Pulse Lanterns: Crude glass spheres swirling with captive Rift echoes.
  When activated, they pulse once for every Riftborn entity within several hundred feet — a heartbeat of warning before death arrives.

The Voidstalkers’ armory is not designed for glory.

It is designed for termination.

The Scar of Severance

Every true Voidstalker carries the Scar of Severance —
a metaphysical wound inflicted during the final rite of initiation.

It is not visible to mortal eyes.
It cannot be healed by magic.

But to those who walk the Rift, the Scar blazes like a beacon:

• Riftborn recognize it immediately — recoiling, snarling, or attacking with uncharacteristic desperation.

• Rift energy recoils from the Scar, granting Voidstalkers resistance to certain forms of Rift corruption.

• Weaving reality becomes easier near a Stalker, but dangerously unstable if overused.

This wound marks them not just as hunters, but as partially severed from the material plane itself.

Some Stalkers describe it as "standing half in existence, half in memory."

It is their blessing.

It is their doom.

The Final Oath: The Silent Vigil

At the end of their training, under the Rift-lit sky of Aetheria, a Voidstalker kneels at the edge of the greatest visible fracture —
and speaks the Silent Vigil into the stillness:

"I am the wound in the world that will not heal.
I am the breath between heartbeats.
I am the shadow that walks before the storm.
Where the Rift tears, I will stand.
Where the Void howls, I will answer.
I will sever.
I will endure.
I am the Vigil."

—

Once spoken, the Voidstalker rises.

No fanfare.

No songs.

Only the endless Pulse in their bones, and the knowledge that from that moment forward —
they are all that stands between Aetheria and the hungering dark.

Slang & Identity

Internal Slang (used by Voidstalkers themselves)

Term

Meaning

“Wearing the Black”

Being fully committed to a mission that requires absolute silence, sacrifice, and solitude. ("She’s wearing the Black tonight.")

“Veilslipping”

Moving unseen through Riftlight or unstable space; operating invisibly across dangerous terrain.

“Fraywalking”

A Voidstalker operating directly along Rift fractures — hunting, tracking, or assassinating in environments most would not survive.

“Losing the Loom”

When a Voidstalker’s mind begins to fray from long exposure to Rift energies or from too many solitary missions. Spoken softly — a mark of tragedy.

“Shadowbound”

A Voidstalker who accepts the cost of their calling fully, binding themselves not to victory, but to necessity. ("He’s Shadowbound. He won’t come back.")

External Slang (used by others about Voidstalkers)

Term

Meaning

“Whisperknives”

Half-feared, half-revered nickname among soldiers; Voidstalkers kill before they're seen, often without sound.

“Riftbloods”

Some civilians call Voidstalkers this, believing their blood is touched by the Rift itself.

“Graveweavers”

Cynical term among Riftbreakers and frontline warriors; Voidstalkers are seen as necessary but ominous.

“The Silent Host”

A rare, mythic term; some believe Voidstalkers operate as part of an invisible, ancient order hidden across Aetheria.

RP Identity Themes

• The Cost of Isolation.
  Voidstalkers are intensely alone by necessity — operating without backup, without witnesses, often without glory.

• Survival Against Fracture.
  Every step they take risks their body, mind, and soul unweaving if they misjudge Rift energies — and they know it.

• Assassins by Duty, Not by Choice.
  They don’t kill for pleasure. They end threats before collapse begins.
  Every life taken saves countless others — a brutal calculation few understand.

• Instruments of Cold Mercy.
  When others flinch, Voidstalkers strike.
  They carry the heavy truths of necessity on their silent blades.

Common Voidstalker Mantra:
"By unseen paths, by unshed blood, we stitch the Loom anew."