Abyssal Backgrounds

     For a long time I've wanted to put more of a distance between the Neverborn and Oblivion. In The Abyssals they are intermingled, especially in the Charm descriptions (due to the Neverborns' goal of entering Oblivion.) In V3 the Neverborn and Oblivion are more exclusive and so, considering my development of Dark Messiah Style, I've split their influence into two Backgrounds.
    Whispers is still a connection to the Neverborn manifesting as Jack Walters-esque visions, hallucination-like fever dreams and other phenomena. Unlike the Background in the book, Abyssals so not bear the direct influence of the Neverborn, although the Deathlords do, bearing fragments of their souls.
    Avatar: A Background possessed only by Abyssals and Nephwracks and perhaps a few aberrant persona. I'm going to have to reconstitute some lost material about I wrote during a moment of insight but Avatar is related to the Abyssals' Virtues. It's a measure of Oblivion within the character, hence it's importance to Dark Messiah Style.

Abyssal Backgrounds

    Whispers is the character's level of psychic connection to the Neverborn and how much their voices reverberate through the character's mind. The Labyrinth is filled with the voices of the Neverborn, things like the Labyrinth that are constantly being consumed by Oblivion yet never diminish. Abyssal characters may have Whispers from character creation without ever having been to the Labyrinth. They appear in the character's mind with no known cause like the visions in the mind of Jack Walters.
   Avatar represents the character's connection to the Void. All Nephwracks have it as well as Spectres unless you'd rather have Spectres being ghosts that serve Oblivion whereas Nephwracks have been 'consecrated' by it. The dark hunger that exists within the Void exists in them.

Nephwracks

    "The creator of the Shadowcrafting path, now a chattering invalid, maintains during brief moments of lucidity that strange shadow entities wait in every darkened corner. Certainly the shades conjured by this path give credence to such notions, but the Kindred in question asserts that these beings devour light and feed upon the very essences of those who would dare truck with them."

-Clanbook Tremere 

   What if these beings are Nephwracks, beings so devoted to the Neverborn or the Labyrinth that they have transformed into something like them like a ghostly apotheosis. They have gained the power to locally control the Labyrinth. Plasmics, creatures from the very stuff of the Labyrinth sometimes make their way into the Underworld.

   Are ghosts imprisoned in soulsteel or are they sacrificed to it to create something that is like Oblivion?

   What if Whispers does more than just giving a psychic connection to the Neverborn. It actually changes people. The character can hear the psychic screaming of the Neverborn as if they were in the Labyrinth or at the tombs of the Neverborn.