The Nature of Voids
If you’ve read my Encyclopedia article, you know a little about the Void, or rather, the largest Void in Multiverse, if Voids can be said to have size. That Void is formally called the Void between Dimensions and is a good example of one of the two common types of Void seen in Universes that make wide use of Wormholes and Warp Tunnel access to their dependent Dimensions.
The other common Void goes by another name that you may be familiar with: Limbo. Limbo is almost always the destination for extremely botched wormholes created via Magic. The poor prisoner of Limbo usually finds himself floating in a space that is either black or a shade of white that isn’t eye-smarting, with plenty of air to breath, or no need to breath, and livable temperature. On top of this, the passage time is frequently absent from Limbo since it’s a non-place, possessing the three (or possibly four) dimensions of Space, but not the dimension of Time. Without Time, not only do sensitive watches stop ticking, but so does your metabolism and biological clock. Essentially, Limbo is a region of partial stasis. So you stay forever in Limbo and be physically unchanged, but the lack of anything except you, and possibly companions that got stuck there with you, can quickly lead to madness and mental breakdown if you aren’t extracted within a few days (from the viewpoint of the Universe you came from of course).
The Void between Dimensions, as well as many other Voids, is a lot less friendly than Limbo. These Voids are almost always black, somewhere between frigid and absolute zero in temperature, and naturally inclined to keep themselves truly void of anything. This last is especially true of the Void between Dimensions, which annihilates all matter and energy that enters it within thirty seconds. Another deadly Void can be seen in a Universe that plays home to a favorite book series of mine: The Dragonriders of Pern, by Anne McCaffrey. On Pern, who’s Universe may or may not be an Earth Congruence, the dragons and their diminutive Fire-lizard cousins are capable of crossing vast distances nearly instantly by jumping through a Void they call between. Between has an added feature I haven’t noted anywhere else: on top of being so cold it kills after about five seconds, between is a region of total sensory depravation; you cannot hear, see, smell, taste, or feel anything (besides the cold). Frankly, I’d prefer the Void between Dimensions.
As a rule, Voids cannot be accessed directly, between being the exception, but must be briefly touched during warps. Getting dumped into one is always the result of faulty construction of a Warp Tunnel or the improper or incomplete declaration of the exit point. In Universes where Mage-created Warp Tunnels are at least known about by some name, such as Portal or Gate, it is almost always required to go through a great amount of study in energy control and mental discipline before a mage is allowed to attempt to create such a Warp Tunnel or Portal without the aid of some pre-tuned magic instrument.