Vacuity

Overview
The Vacuity is a common given name for the primary and most dangerous enemy of the Dominion and humankind as a whole to date. It is one of the primary driving forces behind the Dominion's incredibly rapid and unrestrained expansionism- they are running.

It is akin to a cosmic force, impossible to reason with, and ultimately destructive. Its name is derived from what it does to a given universe, returning it to nothingness.

Origin
The Vacuity is a technology created by the Minimalist to consume realities and convert them into Minimals.

From a Dominion perspective the exact origin of the Vacuity is unknown. Evidence of its existence was first discovered thousands of years pre-Dominion. It was only until the Dominion started expanding into other universes that the Vacuity began to emerge from all over and attack en-masse. A few hundred years post-formation, the Dominion was young and not ready for an enemy like the Vacuity. This prompted the unrestrained growth stage that has continued until the present day.

It was later found that the Vacuity has likely permeated through most of the higher spatial dimensions of the Dominion's reality and has begun seeping into the lower dimensions via various extrusion points.

It is speculated that the Vacuity has already consumed all of the higher dimensions and the lower four spatial dimensions humankind reside in are surrounded. Most people prescribe to the theory that the Vacuity is the product of an incomprehensibly advanced civilization or is an alternate form of life not yet understood by humankind.

Description
Appearing as a seething and writhing mass of pseudo-fluid, the Vacuity is believed to be a form of natural superintelligence- the quanta of which are the excessively violent and seemingly non-deterministic perturbations of particles and photons caught within the medium. This "fluid" propels itself much like a single-celled organism, except instead of a solid surface, it "pulls" itself along by compressing space itself, effectively removing the distance between itself and a given destination. It also continually flows in from a central source, becoming greater and greater in volume and density. The Vacuity itself exists in a state of incredibly high entropy, as the artificial compression of space beyond what should be physically possible results in the breakdown of known physics and particles within.

This has a serious degenerative effect, any given quantity of Vacuity will slowly compress space more and more, becoming denser and absorbing the physical structure of the universe. The final fate of any universe afflicted with the Vacuity is to be compressed into one, incredibly dense mass of Vacuity, that then moves onto its next destination. When Vacuity is destroyed, the space it compressed is released and "rebounds" violently, shredding it and anything nearby into a subatomic soup. This makes both the existence and the destruction of Vacuity incredibly dangerous.

Any matter that comes into contact with the Vacuity is torn apart by the chaotic storm of tidal forces and the sudden exposure to an extremely high entropy environment. Any thoughtform that comes into close contact and survives is likely subverted at the physical level and is terminated with extreme prejudice.

The Vacuity does not exclusively spread uniformly; when threatened it can perform several actions, including but not limited to: 'condensing' its compression down to a fine point and firing an offshoot at a given target, selectively destroying parts of itself to manipulate distances and unleash devastating storms of high energy particles and tidal forces, and worst of all- forming independent constructs from itself and sending them on a direct offensive.

Capabilities
Unrelenting, innumerable, and almost unstoppable, it's no secret that the Dominion has been forced to flee from the Vacuity on numerous occasions. Generally, once the density exceeds a certain amount, a direct victory becomes nearly impossible, and a "scorched earth" policy of destroying any matter within a given radius and retreating to reinforce a defensive line is enacted, as Vacuity tends to slow and become more passive when there's nothing to consume nearby.

Defense
The Vacuity can be destroyed by ablation and annihilation, ablated sections will become inert and destroy themselves, releasing any captured space. Anything capable of annihilating subatomic particles can also be used to weaken the Vacuity, as a large portion of its mass is in the form of free particles. The Vacuity is therefore vulnerable to dissolution from conventional weaponry, but its sheer volume and density usually make it an incredibly hard target. Since space is huge, even energies in excess of hypernovae are insufficient for suppressing the Vacuity; Massed heavy and superheavy weapons fire, preferably kinetics are the common method for chipping away at it. Void weapons are the most effective but are held back by their poor cost-efficiency. Antimatter weapons are of limited effect due to the fluctuating particle-antiparticle nature of the Vacuity. De-transmutation works but is slow and lacks range.

Mobility
Thanks to its innate spatial depletion properties, the Vacuity can move at FTL speeds and "jump" impossible barriers. Transit from point to point is actually observed to be instantaneous for the Vacuity, in contrast to the continuous motion of physical objects, but its distance coverage over time is proportional by its rate of spatial depletion and the flow rate of the extrusion point. When threatened or it perceives an opportunity, the Vacuity can "focus" its spatial depletion in a given direction and jump forward thousands or in the cases of massive quantities- tens of thousands of parsecs at a time (though in reality, nothing moves and instead the target space is now closer to the Vacuity). The Vacuity also self-annihilates small quantities of itself strategically to interfere with the movement and aim of its targets. This non-linear and non-uniform spatial depletion not only results in severe confusion for anyone attempting to fight it but also serves to bring targets closer to the central mass so they may be absorbed.

Offense
The most dangerous capability of the Vacuity is its growing computational capabilities. Once it has reached the supercluster stage of growth it gains the ability to construct independent actors called vagrants. These vagrants are constructed from organized Vacuit and operate independently of the central mass. They use highly focused spatial depletion as both a weapon and a propulsion mechanism. They can imitate the weaponry and defenses of any entity they assimilate with and use them where necessary. These vagrants will not only intelligently search and destroy hostiles, but also scout ahead for energy signatures away from the extrusion point and begin assimilating them.

Sufficient masses of Vacuity will begin to expel exotic particles known as "Exons", observed to be a byproduct of its equivalent to metabolism. These particles have a unique interaction with any matter, causing a linear change of the localized physical laws and constants of whatever they make contact with. Excess exon exposure is known to destroy any defense due to reality-warping effects. Exons themselves are also a class II cognitohazard for any living being they make contact with- this is not much of a problem until exon density exceeds a certain threshold and becomes a class III cognitohazard for any entity that makes contact. It is speculated that the exons are a physical manifestation of the Vacuity's will.

The final observed stage of any sufficient mass of Vacuity is to separate from the extrusion point and become a huge vagrant with spatial content exceeding that of a universe contained within. These vagrants condense an outlandish amount of energy and space into a small package and possess the knowledge to construct whatever they have consumed- which they usually use to produce bulk quantities of subverted spacecraft and FTL drives. In some cases, the exon emission of these vagrants is also sufficient to be classified as an incredibly dangerous class IV cognitohazard, in addition to being almost instantaneously destructive to unshielded matter in range.

These vagrants are referred to simply as "devourers" and are a priority one threat wherever they appear.

Scale
The full extent of the Vacuity is unknown. Its current coverage of 3D space is confirmed to be confined to approximately five hundred million multiverses of segment one; various estimations have projected this to be as high as nonillions of undiscovered multiverses across the segment in addition to an incalculable quantity of intrusions into other segments.