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Null
Name: Null
Title / Role: The Dark Elder, the Eighth Elder of the Eternal Loom (fallen)
Parentage: Woven by all three of the FirstSpun equally - the only Elder to be so
Faction: The Obscurists (founder and figurehead). Formerly the Elders of the Eternal Loom
Home: The Observatory of the Obscure, above the Absurdity Abyss, high in the WeaveWatch Wale (formerly the Observatory of the Unseen)
Status: Active. The enduring antagonist of Threadbare
Themes: Absence, Denial, Despair, Silence, Unmaking
"Not, for nothing could be otherwise.
None, for nothing remains.
Never, for nothing lasts.
And so, Null."
-- The Obscurist Creed
Null is the Dark Elder, the one who gives the Obscurists their name and their purpose. Once counted among the Elders of the Eternal Loom, the ancient keepers of Threadbare's history and knowledge, Null's fall from that circle is spoken of only carefully, and never in front of the Loom itself. Null is remembered as the Eighth Elder.
Where the other Elders hold that forgetting is a wound to be mended, Null teaches that it is simply the truth of things, and that the Great Weave's insistence on meaning is its own kind of cruelty. Null rarely leaves the Observatory of the Obscure, preferring to send the Obscurists out in service of the Unweaving, and is said to speak, on the rare occasion of a direct encounter, not in anger but in something closer to pity, for anyone still bothering to hold their thread together.
Every Elder of the Eternal Loom was woven on the Loom, and every Elder is, in the end, a child of one of the FirstSpun in particular: the children of If carry wonder, the children of Once carry memory, and the children of Ever carry spirit. Null alone was woven by all three at once, from equal threads of Imagination, Memory, and Spirit.
The oldest tellings say the other Elders once thought Null the most complete of them. It was Null who could picture the world otherwise, remember it as it was, and hold to it for as long as it took. And it was this that made the fall possible. Null knew each gift of the FirstSpun from the inside, closely enough to learn exactly how each one could be unpicked.
No telling records the name Null was woven with. It is said to have been lost to the Void, or given to it. Nor do the tellings agree whether Null was ever spoken of as he or she, and the Obscurists refuse the question. Unlike every other Elder, Null carries no name given by Threadlings over a long life. Null has only a single, stark word, and that absence is itself the point.
Null's fall was not sudden. It began, the Elders believe, with study: long years spent looking not at the threads of the Great Weave, but at the gaps between them. When the Void was born at LoomLit, and began its slow, uncaring spread across the world, Null watched it more closely than anyone. Where the other Elders saw a wound, Null came to see an answer.
In a final confrontation with the other Elders, before marching the Obscurists North to take the Observatory of the Unseen from the University of the Unseen, Null was said to have implored their brothers and sisters of the Loom to consider the peace of a world of nothing. The Elders answered with the oldest line attributed to Once in scripture:
"Gone is not the same as nothing."
Null left Frays End that day, and has not returned. The Observatory of the Unseen, once the primary campus of the University, is now the Observatory of the Obscure: a ruined, makeshift lair perched on the floating peak above the Absurdity Abyss, from which Null watches the world disappear.
Null stands against every gift the FirstSpun gave to the world, and has a denial for each. Together they are known as the Three Denials, and they are the tenets of Null's rebellion.
| FirstSpun | Gift | Null's Denial | The Tenet |
|---|---|---|---|
| If | Imagination | Not | Nothing could be otherwise. Every "what if" is a pretty lie, a cloth thrown over the empty. There is no might be, only what is not. |
| Once | Memory | None | Nothing remains. Nothing is ever truly kept, and so remembering is only grief that refuses to end. |
| Ever | Spirit | Never | Nothing lasts. To hold anything together is futile, a refusal to let things go slack as they were always going to. |
The KnitWitches point out that each denial is only its gift with a single thread pulled. None is one with a single letter added, and once means one time. Never is ever with the same letter before it. And Not sounds exactly like knot: the snag that stops a thread from running through the loom. Every denial begins with the first letter of Null's name, and the Obscurists say this is no accident.
The Obscurists are Null's followers: dark practitioners of a twisted science, dedicated to the Unweaving of existence itself. They recite the Obscurist Creed, and each of its lines is one of the Three Denials. They go out into the world to facilitate the small mischiefs that let the Void and its creatures, the InkDrinkers, Storyvores, and Memory Moths among them, arrive where they otherwise might not.
The Obscurists study the Absurdity Abyss as a kind of scripture, and call it sacred: the truest expression of the Void's honesty.
Null does not command the Void, and the Void does not answer to Null, work for Null, or respond to Null in any way. The Void is not sentient. It does what it does by its very nature, spreading wherever culture, community, and care are no longer passed on. Null simply sees it for what it is, and uses it as an engine for the Unweaving.
Where the Void spreads by neglect, one forgotten thread at a time, the Unweaving is neglect made into a creed. It needs no forgetting to succeed. It needs only permission.
The Great Weave was made on the First Loom with three tools: If's Spindle, Once's Warp Stones, and Ever's Shuttle. For ages the three tools were kept at Frays End by the LoomWardens, the Keepers of the Eternal Loom. Null took all three, and hid them across Threadbare.
The Elders know why. The Eternal Loom can mend the Weave, but only the tools that made the Weave could unmake it entirely. With the tools, the Unweaving would no longer need to wait for enough Threadlings to stop passing the shuttle. See Threadbare Plot.
Null is bowed like every Elder, and like every Elder carries a book. Its pages are blank. The Obscurists say Null has spent a long life unwriting it, and that when the last page is empty, the work will be done. Null is most often pictured alone, at the edge of the Observatory of the Obscure, facing out over the Abyss: not a raging figure, but a still and patient one, waiting for the world to go quiet.
Null is the enduring antagonist of Threadbare: articulate, patient, and certain. Null is not evil for the sake of being evil, and is not driven by rage. Null has a philosophy, and argues it well. This is what makes Null dangerous.
Null is not redeemed, and is not destroyed. Encounters with Null are contests of meaning rather than of blows: each of the Three Denials is answered by the StoryWeaver's journey. Not is answered by imagining and creating. None is answered by remembering and recovering. Never is answered by passing things on together. Threadbare contains no outright violence, and Null's defeats are always of this kind.
For contributors, Null and the Obscurists are the right source for any enemy, obstacle, or mischief that is chosen rather than merely neglected. The Void itself never chooses anything.
- The Elders - Null's former circle; the Eighth Elder
- If, Once, Ever - the FirstSpun, all three of whom wove Null
- The Obscurists - Null's followers
- The Unweaving - the Obscurists' doctrine
- The Observatory of the Obscure - Null's lair, formerly the Observatory of the Unseen
- The Absurdity Abyss - the Obscurists' scripture
- The Void - which Null uses, but does not command
- The Eternal Loom - and the LoomWardens, from whom Null stole the FirstSpun's tools
- Threadbare Plot - Null's part in the main story