The Voidghasts is the name the other species gave them after learning of their existance. Their origin is unknown to the other races, and when they first apered and disapered the other races started to call them Voids or ghasts (old english/scandinavian for geust) or sometimes the longer Voidghasts togheter.  In most cases the Void aperences where friendly and seemed driven by curiousity. The Voidsghasts never stay long when reveled.  The younger races learned litle of their origin but they seemed acient and seemed to apere anywhere in the known universe. 

The Voidghasts or for short Voids does not use sounds for comunicating among themself. Instead they use shapes and colours in their ever changing aperance when "talking" to each other, but when taking the solid forms of other species they can create noices in order to talk and comunicate by sounds. So when learning the other species languages they started  to use the Voidghast name when talking about them selfs. 

After the first encounters they learned to mimic the other races so well that they could fool them into thinking they were one of them. The most talented Voids could stay in caracter hidden among other races for years before any suspicions are raised. This way they learned alot about the "younger" solid races and their motives. They even started to learn and mimic most of their material technologies which they before for millions of years had not found interesting or any pratical use for. This way they resently learned to create starships and travel much faster between stars than they ever did in millenias before. They even started to settle solid planets instead of nebullas and gas giants in order make better use of the "solids" as they sometimes call the younger races and their technologies. 

They call the time before they met the younger races, the time of the drifting. Back then most of their motivation was mostly about exploring the universe as individuals. But it was done in a very slow rate compared to what they now are able to do with the help of their new spaceships. Their society has greatly been changed by all this. Before they lived mostly isolated in small groups but now the oldest and most wise of them have formed the Counsil of Knowledge, to focus all of their race togheter in the aim to make the most use of the younger races curiousities, and their own newly discovered knowlege of the use of the material universe. Some of the other races sometimes call them thiefs and uncreative in their new quest for knowlegde but they dismiss such thoughts, since who could own an idea? The ideas and technologies has always been there long before the younger races come upon them, and the Voids are ancient. They just havent been interested in them before. The younger races should learn that universe has always been theirs and it will continue to be so long after the younger races seize to exist.