The Nothing¶
You feel an arcane presence...
This page or section may contain significant spoilers for Drehmal: Apotheosis. Read the additional messages below for specific spoiler information.
This page contains SIGNIFICANT spoilers for the late-game dungeon at Mt. Yavhlix. DO NOT read further if you have not completed this dungeon, all the way through the "Once More Into the Breach" advancement.
So be it.
This page is about the small section of the Nothing that is accessed in-game, directly from the tear at Mt. Yavhlix. For more on the detailed lore of the concept within the universe of Drehmal, see Nothing under the Lore tab.
After opening and traveling through the tear in the Veil at the Primary Energy Collection Facility, the player is able to enter a portion of the Nothing, a vast void that spans the universe, entirely outside the realm of Drehmal.
An island in the Nothing is the site of the first required major boss battle in Drehmal, and is only visited for this fight.
Coordinates
| X | Y | Z |
|---|---|---|
| 26907 | 126 | -1 |
These coordinates are not actually within the Nothing, but rather, are just in front of the portal to the Nothing. The Nothing itself is its own dimension, replacing the vanilla End.
Story¶
The player enters the tear at the top of the Primary Energy Collection Facility and finds themselves in a small building in the Nothing, being given the "Once More Into the Breach" advancement for entering the Nothing. They are immediately thrust into a boss battle against "Tethlaen, Lost to Nothing", the Aspect of Fear who has been missing and presumed dead for millennia.
Tethlaen questions why the player is fighting them, but ultimately, the only method of progression is to slay him. Once the deed is done, the player can enter a portal that is opened at the center of the arena, triggering the vanilla Minecraft end credits and transporting the player back to the other side of the portal at the Primary Collection Facility.
This is not, however, the end of the story, as the return to Mt. Yavhlix sees the player meet a new guiding voice, with much, much more to show.
Gameplay¶
Mechanically, the Tethlaen fight is nearly identical to the vanilla Ender Dragon fight. The player emerges to the surface from a small stone building to find multiple discrete, but interconnected floating islands. Tethlaen takes a physical form extremely similar to the Ender Dragon, and has very similar behaviors, with the exception of a couple new ranged attacks. He is healed by Unstable Primal Catalysts (end crystals) atop obsidian pillars around the arena, but in addition to the regular crystals, there are also three stone towers around the arena which each hold one crystal, and are guarded by a very strong enemy.
The arena in The Nothing.
Near the end of the fight, Tethlaen will begin to summon additional fear-themed enemies, including Ravager variants and other strong humanoid enemies.
Players can fall into the void off the edge of any one of the islands, and will be instantly killed if they attempt to leave the bounds of the arena (as denoted by the yellow stained glass around the islands). These are possibly the only types of damage that the NoFail setting does not provide immunity to.
Lore¶
WARNING!!! This section contains EXTREMELY SIGNIFICANT spoilers for information learned in end-game areas (after the Mt. Yavhlix dungeon and this encounter in the Nothing).
If you have not FINISHED THE MAIN STORY OF THE MAP IN ITS ENTIRETY, we strongly recommend that you DO NOT continue to read the contents of this article.
Note: The true end of the storyline will take you to a dedicated credits room, NOT the vanilla Minecraft end credits. If you have just finished this sequence at the Nothing, you are not far from making these discoveries yourself.
The Nothing has existed for all of time, but the tear in the Veil at Mt. Yavhlix leading to this particular island was discovered at some point in early Av2 by the Aspects. Noha, Aspect of Meadows who oversaw the region of Faehrcyle, informed Tethlaen that lifeforms around the mountain had become strangely deformed, prompting him to investigate. Tethlaen found that the tear was leaking a dangerous amount of primal energy into the realm. He attempted to close it from the outside, but was unable to form a strong seal, and as such, committed himself to saving the realm by holding the tear closed from the inside. Myths began to take root that the Aspect had flown off the edge of the disc, and Tethlaen was not heard from again until Avsohm reached the tear.
Unfortunately for the Aspect of Fear, the torrents of primal energy within the Nothing (and possibly the essence of the Nothing itself) were unrelenting, and even for a god, this pressure was more than he could reliably handle. The Nothing began to eat at Tethlaen's mind and body over the centuries before Avsohm found the rift. Avsohmic researchers initially sent an audio receptor into the tear and were able to vaguely make out the sound of Tethlaen's voice, but were unable to obtain a clear enough signal to fully converse with the Ever-Fear. Avsohm sent in a unit of soldiers and researchers to investigate the tear and make contact with Tethlaen, and the aspect slaughtered nearly all of them with ease. Chief Science Officer Eleis escaped alive, although she was paralyzed, and Thresa Vera to took her place.
Eventually, Avsohm-Tethlaen relations settled down, as the empire promised to help the Aspect. A mutually beneficial relationship was established, in which Avsohm was permitted to draw some of the Nothing's immense amounts of primal energy for their own use, and in return, they made constructions in the Nothing that would ameliorate the adverse effects of the environment on Tethlaen—the three towers and healing primal catalysts found inside the arena.
The peace brokered between the Aspect and Avsohm eventually became something closer to an alliance, as Tethlaen developed a particularly strong connection to Chief Observer Orix Cehein, the Drehmari with whom he conversed the most. Tethlaen told Orix some of the history behind the realm, and eventually informed him of the danger of primal energy leakage.
After the empire's fall, the structures built to protect the Aspect of Fear deteriorated, and he gradually began to succumb to the decay in the Nothing. Physically frail and barely able to string together a sentence by the Fourth Avihm, he in his greatly weakened form is eventually slain by the player, relieving him of a burden but simultaneously removing the seal on the tear, setting in motion the events of the end-game.
Extras¶
A full transcript of Tethlaen's dialogue can be found here.