The Serenity series

THE SERENITY SERIES
by Holger Nathrath and Bjorn Hermans

as featured in Super Serials

Serenity	Eternity	Infinity
Arachna	Trydent	SER3LV11
	STRAIN

Holger Nathrath, alongside best buddy and playtester Bjorn Hermans, stand together as two of the most loved '94-'95 PWAD developers, rivaling only Dennis and Thomas Moeller. Their Serenity trilogy spans three episodes for the original Doom and three titles' worth of abstract concepts ending in -ity, but only two years, with Serenity and Eternity seeing release in '94 and Infinity in 1995. And there would have been more! Nathrath and Hermans had two Doom II projects in the pipeline, one a conversion of all the existing Serenity levels to Doom II (perhaps with some more?) and the other an original Doom II megaWAD. We only have scraps available of the latter, namely Bjorn Hermans' own Trydent and Nathrath levels that were donated to other projects, most notably STRAIN with others shopped around to other ambitious projects that never saw release (like the Eternity TC - no official relation).

Trydent (TRYDENT.WAD)

TRYDENT
by Bjorn Hermans and Holger Nathrath

Bjorn Hermans and Holger Nathrath cranked out three Doom episodes early in the Doom community's history, known commonly as the Serenity trilogy. Afterward, they had two Doom II projects in progress that were never completed, Serenity For Doom II and Serenity IV. Whether the latter was to be a megaWAD or just an episode, we'll never know, but we do have a few levels that were originally designed for Serenity IV but were released independently following its death. Trydent, a MAP01 replacement published in 1995, is one such offering. As with Arachna, Hermans and Nathrath's duties are switched; here, Hermans is the mapper and Nathrath his playtester.

Infinity (INFINITY.WAD)

Infinity, published in 1995, rounds out the end of Bjorn (tester) and Holger's (mapper) episode replacements, this one taking the place of E1. It's got all the -ity features: music replacements (ha!), lines that block monster movement (usually the same lines that mark dynamic lighting), and goofy mazes. Finally, and most importantly, Bjorn and Holger made sure every map was readily completable from pistol start this time around. E1M8 is still kind of hard, but for different reasons. You still have some ammo show up sans weapons, but rarely to the effect of the previous episodes.

Eternity (ETERNITY.WAD)

One month later and still in 1994, Bjorn Hermans (tester) and Holger Nathrath (mapper) followed up their Serenity Episode 3 replacement with an Episode 2 replacement titled Eternity. As before, there is no story or thematic consistency to this collection, just a bunch of goofy titles. This mapset is a step up in composition and difficulty from their freshman effort, but I feel that the map detailing is a bit more generic, lacking some of the interesting designs like the large pit room from "R U Lonesome?" or the movie theatre gimmick from "Doom -- The Movie". It's a pretty solid set, though, with a few caveats.

Serenity (SERENITY.WAD)

Published in 1994, Serenity is among the first of many episode replacements for Doom that have cropped up since its release. Tested by Bjorn Hermans and mapped by Holger Nathrath, it's also the first of a trilogy of episode replacements, continued in Eternity (Episode 2) and ending in Infinity (Episode 1). Serenity doesn't attempt to follow the themes of Inferno in spite of being an Episode 3 replacement. Nor does it have anything approaching a common theme. Rather, it just looks like Bjorn and Holger having fun, creating a series of eight maps (no secret) that goes down smooth, all things considered.