Tenebris. The collection of modifications nearly unknown in Poland. In Czech and Slovakia known, especially because of a certain pre-release competition for Gothic fans. A collection – because it consists from: Aeter, Thanatos, Infernum, Borders and Resulah. The former recently received an intro remaster, which you will see in this article. A collection unfinished – but released, and today you will be introduced to its two main authors. The one of them is Darkenius.
Darkenius
Where did the idea come from to create a collection of modifications and release them together? It certainly didn’t look like you decided one day: “Then we’ll make five modifications and release them at the same time”.
D: I think that Aeternitas planned this during development of Thanatos and Infernum. Then came Borders, Resulah and Aeter. Our ambitions grew fast and it was inevitable that this will become the collection of modifications. We could’ve release modifications one by one but there’s no fun in that. It’s better when you as a player have to decide which modification you want to play.
The intro of Aeter modification – which received the remaster – is from 2014. At the beginning of the video is written, that Aeter is created by Aeternitas and The Dark Mages Mod Team. This team did not consist of only two people? Who else was involved and on which modifications?
D: The team consists of several people: Aeternitas, Dyrian, Kaiser, Richie and myself. There were also more people who somehow contributed but left us: Sir Raven (story pitch for Infernum, some scripts), Gaz (textures and partial vobbing in Infernum), Vaana (some mesh changes in Thanatos) and RavenTheMad (translations) if I have to name a few. Aeternitas worked almost on everything, Thanatos, Infernum, Aeter and Borders are fully his work, Richie made the base for Resulah, Dyrian helped with meshes a lot, I did scripting and vobbing and some music for intros and Kaiser was our tester. During later development and hard times (i.e. state of epidemic – ed. note) I took the full production as the one who can save the Tenebris project from getting cancelled because I saw a huge potential and uniqueness of this modification.
The creation of modifications alone can generate a lot of interest in the Polish Gothic community. But for people who first learned about Tenebris, its content will probably be more important. Do we play the same character in each modification and is each modification part of one continuous story?
D: Yes, we play the same character in each modification with perspective of Aeternitas (his books – ed. note) as a Nameless hero but the story is different for every modification. For example in Aeter, you arrive to the unknown island with mages from the Order of the Fire and with grandpa Karl; in Thanatos, you’re hiking through dark forests and mountains to get to the South through Borders between Aclavia and Selavia, where Selavia is in south.
Every mod, except Resulah, is located mostly in Selavia region and it is part of lore from Aeternitas’ books which he wrote during development. Resulah on the other hand has different lore written by Richie as his school project. Every mod can go as one continuous story but it’s too early to say it because the project is far from finished and everything can change during the process where I write dialogs for NPCs.
As you can find out from DarkForests.info at some stage of your work you organised a competition. You hid a DVD with the pre-beta version of the modification in the Czech Republic and if someone wanted to play, they could just find it. You hid the first clue about the location of the DVD in Bratislava. Who came up with this idea and what was the implementation like? If there was the first clue, there must have been more. Did anyone manage to find the disc?
D: I think Aeternitas came up with this idea. The implementation of clues was during our The Dark Mages (own name of the team working on Tenebris – ed. note) trip in 2016 where we hid some clues in places like caves, abandoned mines and other places where only the bravest could go. I don’t think that someone could found the disc. I bet Aeternitas hid it pretty well.
How do you feel about Tenebris? Are you satisfied with that, what you achieved in that project?
D: I think we managed to handle a lot of challenges during development, Aeternitas did a lot of his things like thirst, exp, hunger bars, complete darkness in portal rooms (portal here means a passage into a room – ed. note) and outside, limited saving etc. Patience is the key but without help of Auronen and Fawkes and their script packet, we would still struggle with some things like limited torch light, limited sprint, dynamic weather and Tenebris would still be very buggy than it is. We achieved to make a compilation of mods. That’s some ultimate goal I would say.
What were reactions of fans during release at 2023 and after announcing pre-beta version at 2016?
D: Some reactions were positive, some negative but we soon realized that Tenebris project isn’t for everyone due to the hardcore difficulty, survival ability, danger from falling from cliffs and especially limited saving and turned off MARVIN mode. We expected way more response. When we announced pre-beta release in 2016, we didn’t expect much. Fans thought that we were crazy to do such thing as dangerous treasure hunting but we wanted to show them that we are not only modders, but hardcore hikers and adventurers and we take our project very seriously.
Remaster
The Aeter modification intro played when starting a new game was edited by Aeternitas with music by Darkenius in 2014. So it’s been a long time since the release. I got the idea for the remaster when Darkenius sent me gameplay recordings of Tenebris. These were used to create a teaser. I recreated the scenes recorded 10 years ago. The audio remaster, in turn, was handled by Maciej Figatowski.
Then I spoke to Aeternitas, who, in addition to creating modifications, has also written many books and several of them constitute the lore of Tenebris.
Aeternitas
Darkenius responsed, that all modifications except Resulah take place in Selavia and are part of the “lore” of your books, written during creating of Tenebris. Which books are these specifically, what is their main theme, what characters from them feature in the Tenebris modifications?
A: All my main books I wrote in English language take place in Selavia, so in a way there are connected to Tenebris. The most connection is in Aeter, where I chose to follow the exact story of my book The Dark Mages. Because Darkenius continues to develop this mod and I moved to Tenebris 2, so the story is further probably discontinued.
The main idea of the books and the mods is one feeling. Imagine, you stand on a whatever frontier it might be and before you there is an undiscovered country, full of dangerous, gloomy corners, full of beasts of various hellish kinds and shapes. And the adventure then begins. I called the country Selavia, because it connects to us Slavs. I love snow and snow-covered landscapes, so I chose the country to be a snowy land, frozen and enigmatic. There are many underground caves or shafts, what I partly took from our real adventures with Dark Mages and further developped.
One of main figures in my life was my grandpa, so I included him in the story and also Aeter. The Dark Mages are also part of the story, which helped me keep vivid tempo and put more life into the story.
You mentioned about your real adventures with Dark Mages. Have there been more expeditions than the one where you hid the DVD of the pre-beta version? Did you create a certain narrative during them, and did you treat the places you visited as something more than simply a cave, a forest, a mine, a sinkhole?
A: We had several journeys around the Czech republic and one in Slovakia. I remember them as really adventures, sometimes on the brink of life and death. Climbing into the mountains towards old castles while the sky altered to hell and sent to us a rain of lightings or lurking into the dark holes after the treasures of the depths, that all brought us the adventure into real life. I also wrote about these adventures in different books, I called it “The journey of the Highest Mage”. But these are not books about Selavia. I created the stories in Selavia in similar mindset, but these adventures are completely independent from real life. It is fantasy, but not classical fantasy, no magic is involved, it is closing to horror.
We hid the indeces about the location of the main DVD on three places, but the treasure itself I hid alone. Nobody of Mages knows but me where it is. I climbed that day very deep into the earth. And you should imagine, the darkness around you like a claw of death stirring around, but I was continuing further deeper down. When you are alone it is very much different world. One bad step and you stay burried for eternity. At least such is the feeling. Then I found a suitable place there and hid the treasure. I doubt anybody found it and it is probably still there, now for several years.
You mentioned about Tenebris 2. It will be a modification about the events after those depicted in Aeter, Thanatos, Infernum, Borders and Resulah? Have you started work on it yet?
A: Tenebris 2 is yet independent from Tenebris 1, but there will be probably some connection in the future. I started working on it many years ago, and now there are several smaller or bigger worlds, with fantasy landscapes and many secret corners. I built there several castles, a giant cathedral, underground caves or mines with weird plants, and a city. Some places are plunged fully in snow, some in forsaken marches, or some in ever-lasting darkness.
On some of such places you can venture only without light, so fully dependent on the scarse lights in location. But you must beware the dark, it may turn vivid. The snowy world is threaded with twisted gorges and frozen rivers. The gameplay will be very much different from normal Gothic game or from Tenebris 1, much more a puzzled-directed, survival horror with a gloomy story. I presented some photos on web, especially on discord. I have a large deal already done, but far from everything.
What were the players’ reactions to the project during the development of Tenebris 1 and after its publication? Are you satisfied with what you have achieved during the development of Tenebris 1?
A: There are two things. One thing is my feelings about the project, and the second is the community. The Czech community is not involved mostly in mods and their support is scarse or nothing. The other communities always prefer their own modders. So we Czech modders are in a more difficult situation.
E.g. when I posted screens on discord from the new city of Tenebris 2 I got no reactions but reaction of my team mates. Thats sad. So I stopped posting screens there. But I always modded for myself, it is kind of passion for me and I dont need other people to evaluate my work.
We got some reactions on saving limits, hunger, thirst or frost, or restraining of MARVIN, lot of times negative, but my idea is to bring fear into players mind, to avoid that he cheats if he wants to go on, and better struggle for a victory. So these things are fixed and won’t change. There is a lot of opportunities how or where to save game or survive, so the mod is well playable.
For some time I didnt check the reactions of players. I have other projects I do, which take me lot of time, so I am not so active in community as I have been before. I moved lot of things on the shoulders of Darkenius.
Players after finishing a game – are also looking for material about it, as is and was the case with Gothic itself. For example, Florian aka flosha from Phoenix Tales got in touch with Alex Wittmann – author of the book Schläfers Bann. He wrote it during the early development of Gothic in February 1998, based on what he learned about the game. As a result of his contact, a Gothic fan obtained permission to publish it.
Which of your books take place in Selavia? You mentioned about The Dark Mages, and that your main book, which you wrote in English language, take place in this country. Is there a different book associated with each of the Tenebris modifications – with the exception of Resulah, as mentioned by Darkenius?
A: All my English books play in Selavia and all these books are in a way, less or more, related. The Mages (creators of Tenebris – ed. note) are, I guess, in Dark Ages and then, of course, in The Dark Mages. I have my bibliography, even when a bit outdated, on my website http://darkforests.info. Aeter is very much bounded to The Dark Mages, but the other modifications take just general behavior of the world, place, environment or world attributes, but not the exact story. With exception of Resulah, which is completely different.
The stories of all the mods are not connected but the joining was a necessity for me, because suddenly I was working on two many projects, so an idea came to my mind, just to join the mods into one big mechanism, even when they still work partly in independent manner. At first I joined only Thanatos and Infernum with Aeter as a starting world. The Borders and Resulah came later.
I wanted to create The Borders with Dyrian as a quick mod to present our work before we release the main Tenebris, but it didnt go as fast as I wanted, so I joined it simply to Tenebris. Then I also suggested to Richie to add also Resulah, which at that time looked promising. Shortly after joining Richie stopped working on Resulah.
You just explained why you released a collection of modifications at once – a great mechanism – instead of releasing them individually. As was the case, for example, with the Polish Destiny Saga, consisting of five modifications. I didn’t understand this when I first came across your collection.
What else would you like to say to Gothic players – mainly from Poland – as they are mostly our readers? Your modifications take place in Selavia, so I understand, as Slavs we can feel invited?
A: Of course, you are invited. There is more than a connection. Some of my ancesters were from Poland. And my grandparents lived at the borders of Czech republic and Poland, speaking a language, which is a mixture of Czech, Polish, Slovak and German. It is but a pity, then even I understand Polish language, that you dont understand Czech language, so we need English to communicate with each other.
Tenebris, or Darkness
So far, this collection of modifications has been nearly unknown among Gothic fans from Poland. I hope this interview will change that; and maybe even Polish translations will be created. It offers huge areas to explore, a new storyline – but it has bugs that need fixing. You can ask questions, as well as share your impressions with the authors, in the dedicated section on the Discord Gothicz.net server.
Download
Tenebris: the link to download a modification
