Drehmal (Location)¶
This page is about the world of Drehmal which players can explore in-game. For the serpent deity that shares a name with the world, see Drehmal.
The continent of Drehmal and outlying islands, as they appear in-game.1
The continent of Drehmal spans approximately 12,000 blocks in either direction, containing a total of 31 unique custom biomes, 14 major settlements, and hundreds of carefully placed and crafted points of interest. The vast majority of the map's content is found here, including story locations, unique items such as legendary and mythical gear, original builds, and more.
The term "Drehmal" used in this context refers to the single large continent that makes up most of the map's total landmass, as well as its major outlying islands in the far northwest and southeast corners of the map. Drehmal shares its name with its creator, the deity of the same name, who re-formed and shaped the world after it was ruined in the disastrous events that ended the First Avihm. The term "Drehmal" can also be used to refer to the Realm of Drehmal, which encompasses the planetary body that Drehmal is found upon, as well as its natural satellites—four moons and the equivalent of a sun—all of which appear to orbit the planet in a roughly geocentric system.
Gameplay¶
Drehmal is functionally an open world, as once the player emerges from the Stasis Facility, they can choose to explore in any direction. There are areas that the player is pointed towards sometimes, such as Drabyel and Av'Sal at the very beginning of the map, but the player is not confined to any particular path. Exploration is fundamentally linked to story progression, as finding and climbing Avsohmic warp towers gradually unlocks story events.
Drehmal's most advanced and largest civilizations have long since fallen by the time that the player's journey begins, with most regions being relatively isolated. Consequently, there are very few maintained roads to guide the player between regions, and those that do exist often trail off at certain points. This is an intentional design choice, as there are points of interest scattered throughout the world off the beaten path.
The map of Drehmal sold by Adventuring Merchants in official towns throughout the continent, denoting major settlements with colored dots.
Beyond the reaches of the continent, sea stretches out for a few hundred blocks before abruptly falling off into the void.
Lore¶
The history of Drehmal is effectively the same as the history of the entire map, which is what this entire Lore section is for. Therefore, this article's lore will focus on the history of the terrain itself, as well as extremely prominent bits of lore that have to do with the main story.
A set of signs in a ruined church near the Stasis Facility gives a brief rundown of the world's basic origin story, which is also outlined in the next paragraph.
Signs
In the beginning, the realm was unborn. There was only silence.
The Primal Tree was the heart of the world, and it made the Aspects, dragon deities who represent the elements of creation. The Aspects created the land, its features, its animals, and its landscapes. Then the Primal Tree created the Drehmari, who would go on to become the dominant race of the world. There was peace until two opposing Drehmari ideals formed.
These two groups would go to war after many centuries, culminating in a battle at the base of the Primal Tree. The conflict burned the tree down, and the resulting chaos split the tree into three deities: Maelihs, Virtuo, and the most powerful of all the deities, Drehmal, who would use their strength to make a new world, void of the old realm's imperfections.
Reality as known in Drehmal was first formed around the Primal Tree: a sentient, colossal tree imbued with astronomical amounts of power. The Tree created the Aspects, draconic gods tied to certain concepts and domains of reality such as the Sea, Magic, or Warmth. These Aspects, along with the Tree, built the world during the First Avihm, an era that is effectively considered prehistorical in modern Drehmal. Aspects created portions of the land corresponding to their domains; for example, Nahyn, Aspect of Mountains, is responsible for much of Drehmal's mountains, and the Land Aspect Taihgel was particularly active in creating the actual land that formed the continent. During this era, Drehmari were first created by the tree, and populated three separate continents. Eventually, however, war broke out, and a battle was fought at the base of the tree, becoming so violent that it began to burn the tree down. In its final act, the Tree split its essence into the three Deities: Maelihs, Virtuo, and Drehmal, creating three new gods with power even greater than the Aspects, and who would take a much more active role in the history of the world.
This event, the Felling of the Primal Tree, marked the end of the First Avihm, with the ensuing chaos literally splitting the world into pieces. The task of reconstruction fell to Drehmal, the newly born colossal serpentine creator deity, and they set to their task, earning the title of "Realmbinder." Drehmal spent decades traveling to the extents of the disc, tying pieces of land back together and mending the broken world, slowly making the world habitable again until it eventually reached the approximate state that we find it in, during the early Second Avihm. The modern-day Drehmal appears to be effectively a single supercontinent made up of the original central continent, in addition to bits and pieces of the former western/eastern continents, although the exact extent to which this is true is not known.
Of note, Drehmal is not the only land on its planet, as there are two forgotten continents far to the west and east of even its outermost islands, which were excluded from the new continent by Drehmal in their reformation efforts. These continents, known collectively as "Xivrhynt", are mentioned very sparingly in the map, but their existence is known to a select few. It is not known exactly how much of modern-day Drehmal may have been rearranged in the deity's active period, nor is it clear if parts of the continent may have originally been part of what we now know as Xivrhynt. These continents do not actually exist in-game.
After their work had been finished in early Av2, Drehmal entered a deep slumber far beneath the Primal Caverns, and has not awoken to this day, well over 2000 years later.
The terrain of Drehmal has changed very little in the time since Drehmal's active period, with a few notable exceptions. The Empire of Avsohm, in power for approximately 200 years at the end of Av2, was easily the most expansive empire to ever exist on the continent, as well as the most technologically advanced. Their construction efforts, particularly in the building of research and industrial facilities, altered the Drehmal landscape, including through the construction of massive pipelines throughout the regions of Akhlo'Rohma and Faehrcyle. Their violent collapse marked the end of Av2, and left the continent covered in the ruins of their cities, towns, and facilities.
During the reign of Avsohm, the Frostfang Catastrophe occurred, known to this day as the greatest ecological disaster in the realm's history. In a conflict between Avsohm and the tribes of Faehrcyle, the Faehrcylian leader Homli Tahsgan accidentally conjured a blizzard so massive that it permanently altered the climates of multiple northern regions, including Faehrcyle, Highfall Tundra, the Gulf of Drehmal, Merijool, and Casai. All of these regions were once much more lush and fertile than they are today, irreversibly being made colder by the magical blizzard. Faehrcyle suffered the most, turning from a cold steppe into a frozen wasteland, eternally buried under a meters-thick layer of snow.
The most recent major alteration to the terrain of Drehmal came in mid-late Av3, approximately 400 years before the player's journey. This event, the Desolation of the Heartwood, was enacted by the chaos deity Maelihs, who dropped the Skullmother (the approximate equivalent of a nuclear bomb) on the South Heartwood, a once-lush forest/jungle region. The ensuing blast, more a show of power and act of terror than a true military advance, permanently burnt and made infertile the entire southern half of the Heartwood, once the largest forest in all of Drehmal, leaving the land scarred to this very day. For this reason, the South Heartwood is now more frequently referred to as "Mael's Desolation".
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Image captured with Xaero's World Map, a mod that is not part of the official Drehmal modpack but is compatible with the map. This mod is not recommended for first-time players, as it will immediately spoil all terrain features upon being opened for the first time, unlike progression-based mods like JourneyMap. However, it can be a very valuable tool for returning players or successive playthroughs, or if you simply are not bothered by this type of spoiler. ↩