DiabloFans

It's been a long time since there was a wiki news update here on the front page. Too long in fact, especially given how much has actually happened over there in the last few weeks.

You all know of the Portal Update we had some time ago (and even if you didn't catch that news post, you cannot have avoided the new design of the wiki if you've visited it during the last few weeks), but since then we've done some more content-related changes. Especially to items.

<--





The left picture is the new design, while the right is the old. The new template uses a sleeker design that better represents how items appear in-game. And, just like with the last update, I myself once made the old crappy look, and Huck is the main designer of the new one :thumbsup:

For some additional examples of how the change looks, check these pages out:

• Unqiue Swords
• Tal Rasha's Wrappings
• Weapon Runewords

(Naturally there are also similar changes done to the Median part of the wiki by zhuge, while kickin has been whacking away at the regular Diablo items with me).

The new design also allows anyone to easily include any item on their guide pages without having to edit any item stats or looking for templates. All one needs to do is add the item name inside {{X (Diablo II)}} (where X is the item) and it's done.

More things are happening in the wiki every day though. We'll soon start to rework the monster pages, and there'll be an update on that in the wiki forum, so check that out if you're interested in helping out in the near future

It's been five weeks, but the next installment in the cosmology series is here. Last time I went over how the various worlds in the universe were created, what their purpose is and how they relate to each other. Before then, I delved deeper into how the world was actually created, and how it all began.

This time, the article will be slightly different. This article focuses on the most powerful and prominent angels and demons, and seeks to describe them more than anything. The element of speculation is, I believe, considerably less in this installment. To compensate, it also seems to be much longer.

As always, spoilers from the Sin War novels are aplenty. There are also some small spoilers from The Black Road and Kingdom of Shadow as well.

(The pagenumbers currently have ?-marks after them. These numbers do not correspond to the printed pagenumbers, as I use .pdf documents when writing these. I have not yet had the time to double-check the pages in the books, so they are only approximations at current.)

Overview

Demons
Diablo
Mephisto
Baal
The Three

Angels
Inarius
Tyrael
The Angiris Council

Summary
Next Time

Overview
What are angels and demons exactly? On a basic level, they are pretty much the iconic representations of what you would think of when you hear their names: angels are pure beings who fight in shining armor, while demons are mostly ravenous beasts thirsting for blood. After that however, subtle and large differences start to appear that separates them from other games and popular culture.

One thing that is very important to note is that angels are not really a force of good. This is not clear at all if you've only played the games; Heaven in D2 is portayed more like the good guys, who watch to see if humanity is strong enough to stand for themselves. Reading the books however, another picture is painted.

Another difference that is important to note is that there is no indication or suggestion of a god who supervises the angels. In fact, the angels are even confirmed not to follow a deity. They are as autonomous as the demons are.

Because of this, Heaven is just as bad for Sanctuary if it were to win over Hell as the reverse would be, and so the humans are trapped between both. The following quote sums up very nicely what angels think of Sanctuary:

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 211" »

Tyrael — and it dismays me yet to hear you verify that it is he who is here — would see no contradiction in his role as a warrior of light by twisting his words and leading you and likely Achilios to believe him kindly and benevolent!” Rathma’s cloak fluttered almost nervously, an effect more pronounced by the fact that there was no wind. “All he has desired during his time here is to create more chaos that will keep those interested in the world’s survival at one another’s throats, the easier for them to be judged by the High Heavens and erased from existence.”

“Not possible!” Mendeln blurted. “I spoke with him. He was concerned over Inarius’s madness and the fear that demons were gaining control over humanity. He —”

“The truth can hide many lies within it.” The Ancient’s shoulders slumped. “To Tyrael, we would be monsters, things that should have never existed. Therefore, we are not worthy of trust or truth. All that matters is our annihilation, so that we do not blemish creation.

Of course, before the end of the Sin War, Tyrael has a change of heart. In a vote between the Angiris, Tyrael votes for humanity, stating the following:

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 330" »

BUT I WAS NOT THERE…AS WERE NONE OF YOU, Tyrael reminded his counterparts. AND SO THIS THING GREW…AND GREW…UNTIL IT BECAME WHAT NONE COULD FATHOM, WHAT NONE COULD HAVE EXPECTED! THIS PLACE CALLED SANCTUARY HAS BROUGHT FORTH SUCH AS WE HAVE NEVER WITNESSED, THINGS I MYSELF CALLED ABOMINATIONS! Before Imperius could interrupt, Tyrael pressed, BUT ABOMINATIONS DO NOT FEEL SUFFERING, THEY DO NOT STRUGGLE FOR ONE ANOTHER AGAINST GREAT ODDS AND THEY DO NOT…THEY DO NOT…OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL…CHOOSE…YES…CHOOSE TO COMMIT SUCH GREAT SACRIFICE FOR THE SAKE OF OTHERS.

Mendeln felt the hope rising among his companions, even the generally dour Rathma. Was it possible of Tyrael, of all the angels?

WE SACRIFICE, responded Imperius. OF WHAT DIFFERENCE WAS HIS?

WE SACRIFICE BECAUSE WE MUST…BECAUSE IT IS PART OF OUR CALLING! WE DO IT BECAUSE IT IS OUR DUTY AND NO MORE! THE MORTAL, ULDYSSIAN UL-DIOMED…HE CHOSE TO SELFLESSLY GIVE HIMSELF BECAUSE HE CARED FOR HIS COMPANIONS! IT WAS NOT HIS DUTY…BUT HIS DESIRE. Tyrael looked at each of the other judges, ending with Imperius. I DID CALL THEM ABOMINATIONS…AND I WAS WRONG! MY VOTE IS FOR THEM…FOR I WOULD SEE WHAT THEY MIGHT BECOME…AND MARVEL IN IT.

The change of heart Tyrael has here explains his heavy involvement later on in the games, when the rest of Heaven seems to be extremely passive. However, it also reveals more about Heaven than at first glance. Total domination of heaven is often seen as a grave potential, with a rigidity and order imposed on humanity that it would be terribly to live in.

Astrogha further comments on this point:

Quote from name="Scales of the Serpent, page 73" »

Humans could become the weapon the demons needed to at last seize total victory from the sanctimonious angels, yet the tendency toward good in them might make them ally themselves with the High Heavens…until the piousness and rigidity of the winged warriors sickened their stomachs as much as it did the demons’.

Of course, a demon would probably feel that any amount of piousness is sickening. But Tyrael's speech remains. He spaks of selflessness and comassion prominent in humans, and views it as good. Perhaps Heaven is not as bad after all. It's probably no good for Sanctuary if Heaven were to beat Hell and the angels invade, but that does not mean that an equal 50-50 balance between Heaven and Hell is preferable either. While both must exist, a greater tendency towards Heaven is probably preferable for humanity and Sanctuary as a whole.

Demons
If we start at the easiest and most straightforward end, we have the demons. Since both Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 have focused on us as players killing demons by the scores, the games have given us a pretty good grasp of what they are. In large part, many of them would hardly be more than what the games show us had they been dropped down in our world. Most would have run around and killed everything in sight.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 307" »

The demons were not like the angels. They had no uniformity save their savageness. They did not come in rank upon rank but spilled out like water, quickly covering vast ground, then rising up into the sky.

The more powerful demons however are not very accurately portrayed in the games, and so knowledge of them must be gathered from the books.

Diablo
Big D himself is the iconic demon in the Diablo Universe. Big and red with lots of spikes, horns, claws and teeth, Diablo is as fearsome as they get. He went through some minor changes in Diablo 2 compared to how he appeared in Diablo 1. His original form was quite humanoid, standing upright. The image to the left, from Diablo 2, depicts a more beast-like Diablo, who runs on all fours, with a massive tail to accompany him. Some say he looks like a dinosaur, but in large part he is still humanoid, with two legs, two arms and all that.

In the Sin War however, Diablo takes on another shape. He is encountered many times throughout the books by different characters, and throughout all of them Diablo constantly changes appearance in accordance with the fears of the watcher.

Quote from name="Scales of the Serpent, page 74" »

As the hideous specter neared, Astrogha then caught glimpses of a fiery red shape, huge fists with black talons, and a horrific countenance that was in part a rotting skull with blazing eyes that burned into the arachnid’s own. Monstrous, curled horns—like those of a ram’s gone amok—topped the thick-browed, scaled head.

Fiery red shape, huge fists with black talons, curled horns, thick-browed and scaled head. Excepting the rotting skull, the description fits very well with the appearance Diablo has in D2. In other instances however, this is not the case.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 190" »

From below came a wild roar. Out of the water burst the monstrous shadow, and as it rushed up at Uldyssian, it transformed a hundred times. Each incarnation was more horrific than the last, and nearly all the son of Diomedes could trace to his own innate terrors.

Clearly here then, we see that Diablo resembles that which his onlookers fear. The question though is, does he do this purposefully, i.e. is it a power he can choose to control, or is it an innate quality of his very being, his natural form?

First, an encounter between Inarius and Diablo.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 148" »

Inarius showed no sign of anxiety when that figure became another winged warrior he knew so well. “You are not Tyrael, and I am not afraid of him.”

Are you not? Then why do I resemble him?

It should be noted here that Inarius quite probably does fear Tyrael, he's obsessed with the angel throughout the latter parts of the books. Diablo's response would indicate that his own shape merely changes to what Inarius fears.

On the other hand, during an encounter between Uldyssian and Diablo, something else happens.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 190" »

And so Diablo looked upon himself.

Under any other circumstances, Uldyssian doubted that the demon would have been affected. Prepared for such a trick, the Lord of Terror would have adjusted. Here, though, Uldyssian’s spell happened so quickly, and with so much instinct as opposed to preparation, that the demon could not have known what to expect.

Thus, Diablo inflicted upon himself that which he did unto others. The fears he had been thrusting upon the human altered to his own.

The shadowy figure let out a shriek that nearly made Uldyssian flee in mindless panic.

Of course, Uldyssian cannot know for sure what Diablo can or cannot do. But the idea that simply holding up a mirror is enough to stop him at all times seems ludicrous. Diablo must be able to exercise active control this power of his for it to make any sense. He's not medusa.

This of course does not say whether or not Diablo does in fact his true for is the one we see in Diablo. Thus I fall back on the fourht cinematic in D2. At about 2:10, Mephisto says:

Quote from "cinematic" »

Now my young brother, the time has come for you to assume your true form.

Which is his dino form with tail and all.

All in all, Diablo probably looks something akin to how he appears in Diablo 2.

Mephisto
Mephisto is the eldest of the Three (which of Baal or Diablo is the youngest has never been made clear anywhere thus far). He is also the master of the undead. Indicated by his skeletal appearance in D2, it is made clear in the Kingdom of Shadow, spoken by a mage of the Vizjerei.

Quote from name="The Kingdom of Shadow, page 12?" »

The Prime Evils. Whatever land one had been born in, whether in the jungles of Kehjistan or the cooler, rockier realms of the Western Kingdoms, all knew of the Prime Evils, the three brothers who ruled Hell.

Mephisto, Lord of Hatred, master of undead. Baal, Lord of Destruction, bringer of chaos

What this means exactly is unclear, but it is an interesting tidbit of knowledge.

Still, what does Mephisto look like? Contrary to Diablo, his appearance in The Sin War does not agree well with how he appeared in D2.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 331" »

The shadow coalesced somewhat into a tall, macabre shape that instantly brought to Mendeln’s mind the monstrous morlu or, worse yet, their heinous master, Lucion, who, like Lilith, was also offspring of this sudden and dread visitor.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 332" »

A green, scaly hand thrust forth from the shadow to condemn Inarius.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 332" »

A hint of great, sharp teeth momentarily flashed into sight where the demon’s head should have been.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 333" »

A black substance oozed from the bite, and this the demon let drip onto the spot the angels had chosen.

To fully understand this description, we must also have a description of Lucion and Lilith, Mephisto's two children.

Lilith

Quote from name="Birthright, page 252" »

Rather, it was taller and hideously scaled, with a mass of fiery quills for hair, quills that ran down the spine to…to a reptilian tail ending in savage barbs. Where the delicate hands had been were now clawed fingers—four, not five. Worse, the feet were like hooves, yet splayed, too.

The body was unclad and, although monstrous, still very, very female. The lush curves enticed, drawing his eyes despite his dismay. But most horrific of all was that, when he looked up into the face -the face with its burning orbs that had no pupils and teeth designed for shredding—he could still see the features that he recognized as that of the woman he loved.

Lucion

Quote from name="Birthright, page 312" »

And as he spoke, the facade of humanity fell away. Lucion’s aspect grew terrible to behold, even more so to Uldyssian because there was resemblance to Lilith after all. Lucion stood half again taller than the demoness and much broader, but he, too, had the thorns that acted as mane all the way down his scaled back. Yet, where she had only had one tail, her cursed brother had three, all spiked from top to tip with daggerlike projects longer than Uldyssian’s hand.

Lucion took a step toward him again and, in doing so, revealed that he also had the hooved legs his sister did. His hands were different, though, for the fingers on each numbered more than five and the claws were like those of a badger, but dripping with what surely had to be poison.

And of the face, only the eyes were identical. Lucion, who played at being the handsome, schooled cleric, was a beast whose head more resembled a toad. His mouth was wider than the top of his skull, and row upon row of teeth greeted Uldyssian. The brother of Lilith had no nose, not even nostrils, and his chin was hooked so sharply in the middle that Uldyssian could almost imagine it being used as a weapon.

Clearly then it would seem that Mephisto would share some traits with his brother Diablo. He is no undead himself, even though he may be the master of them.

We cannot be certain of Mephisto's finer features though. Lilith and Lucion have similar shapes, but differ in their faces. Likewise, Mephisto probably looks like them in body, but has a different face. It is not impossible he share some features with Diablo as well. They are, after all, brothers.

Why then does Mephisto not look like this in D2? Why is he a hovering skeleton? The answer to that question is simply that, in D2, Mephisto possesses the body of Sankekur, the leader of the Zakarum. Like Tal Rasha for Baal and the Wanderer for Diablo, they are all much more human while still in their bodies. Diablo, shedding his human form, is the only one of them who truly returns to his demonic form in the games.

Baal
Unfortunately, there's is little to be said about Baal. He plays such a minor role in the books, never appearing and only being mentioned here and there in passing that there's little new to say. I did however find one interesting thing: Baal appears to be more stupid than his brothers, or at least he has more stupid demons serving him.

Quote from name="Birthright, page 207" »

“Stupid is Gulag,” came Astrogha’s monstrous voice from above. “Like his master he is…”

Quote from name="Birthright, page 207" »

“And you, Gulag, do you have any reservations about accepting what I offer even before hearing the price?”

“Dessssstrucctionnnnnn?”

He smiled at the simple question. “Yes, there could very well be some.”

“Hhhheadddd…”

It was as close to an acquiescence as Lucion would get from one of Baal’s minions.

Quote from name="Birthright, page 274" »

Satisfied that it was not Gulag, Lucion sought then for Astrogha. The spider was a more cunning creature, being of Diablo’s calling.

Both of these indicate that demons of Destruction think little, and it clearly shows that Astrogha is more cunning because he is a demon of Terror.

Whether Baal is more stupid isn't necessarily true, Astrogha will likely not give much credit to a Prime other than his master Diablo. But Lucion has the same thought of Gulag, while at the same time acknowledging that Astrogha is not dumb. If this were simply a matter of hate between servants of different Primes, Lucion should not have upheld Astrogha so.

It seems strange that Baal should be noticeable dumber. But why would he surround himself with stupid demons then?

The Three
Now, how do the Three interact with each other? There is much mystery regarding this, and I have in the past tried to figure out how their relationship works. It is well known that demons constantly plot against each other:

Astrogha against Lucion:

Quote from name="Scales of the Serpent, page 73" »

If Lucion was no longer fit to command, then someone would rightly have to step in and take his place…but that would prove difficult, considering Mephisto’s role in this. The other Prime Evil would not take kindly to his offspring’s role being usurped…unless the results of that proved most promising.

And so Astrogha was debating plots of his own.

And Kabraxis against the Three:

Quote from name="The Black Road, page 139?" »

If we grow too quickly, we will attract the attention of the Prime Evils, and I’m unwilling to deal with them at the moment. For now, though, you have a service to give.

There are others, but the thing I have always remarked about is that the Three do not seem to plot against one another. Even when they were all shattered and imprisoned, they reunited in Kurast. And Baal, like most of you have heard, screams "My brothers will not have died in vain!" when you enter the Worldstone Chamber at the end of D2. Is it in fact so that the Three do not plot to overthrow one another?

There is much on this topic. First, Malic summons a demon:

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 122" »

“My master is Mephisto, brother to your master…Diablo….”

Again, the demon bubbled. By this point, there was hardly anything left of the dead mage save a few bone fragments, including the skull.

“By the pact of the Three, you must bow to my power. You must obey my will! Understand?”

Clearly Malic is here using some sort of agreement between demons. If a servant of another Prime if specific terms are met (in this case a human sacrifice), then the summoned demon is forced to obey the summoner. This is important, for it shows a matter of trust between the Three. They are allowing demons not of their own to command their servants... provided they belong to another Prime.

However, when Diablo and Inarius meet, Diablo is of another mind:

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 148" »

I deal with a traitor, a liar, and a murderer, said a voice that, despite Inarius’s claim, sent a slight chill through him. It’s almost like dealing with one of my brothers.

This could mean much. On the one hand, it could mean that the Three are as treacherous against each other as against other demons and servants. At first glance, it certainly seems that way.

On the other, if one ponders this for a bit, this makes little sense. By all accounts, the Three have reigned in Hell forever. If they backstabbed each other constantly, there must have been fluctuations in power, either in favor of themselves or for other demons (such as Kabraxis or Azmodan and Belial).

And if we consider the Three, they are most certainly traitors, liars and murderers in their own right (though it's hard to use that last term on them when they are obviously not bound by any law). That does not mean they commit any of these acts against one another however. In the Veiled Prophet, Diablo betrays Inarius, lies to Uldyssian and probably murders somebody along the way as well, which would make him all three things.

Now there may be scheming between them, but there are different levels of betrayal. Are any of them willing, or in fact even able, to overthrow the others?

On the same topic is an interesting exchange between the Auriel and Mephisto when he appears.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 331" »

YOU OFFER PARLEY…LORD MEPHISTO? Auriel asked the shadow. YOU…NOT YOUR BROTHER?

...

“My dear brother is beside himself. Therefore, I, who am also supreme, do indeed offer parley — and more! I offer…a truce.”

It is obvious that Auriel would expect Diablo to handle this exchange. In fact, up until this point, only Diablo of the Three has appeared on Sanctuary during the entirety of the series. Only after Uldyssian "scares" Diablo away does another Prime Evil enter the picture.

What's more is that Mephisto is not at all surprised by Auriel's reaction, or angered that he is not viewed as Diablo in this matter. (This may be entirely unintentional and simply a detail Knaak did not consier however).

Tyrael lends another piece into the puzzle:

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 177" »

The angel dipped his head ever so slightly. AND PERHAPS THE WORST OF THE THREE…HE WHO IS THE ESSENCE OF TERROR…THE LORD DIABLO.

What Tyrael expresses here seems to confirm what was suggested earlier: Diablo is the foremost of the Three.

It is not entirely clear though, for Mephisto is apparently able to seal a truce between Heaven and Hell, which includes Diablo, and Tyrael only says that Diablo is perhaps the worst. Not very clear at all.

Still, two times in favor of Diablo, as well as a lot of appearances from him. If nothing else, Diablo is probably a first among equals.

But wait a minute some of you will say. What about the 4th cinematic in D2, the one where Mephisto seems to be commanding Diablo into Hell?

It has been argued that this scene, where Mephisto says "Send forth your Terror into Hell." implies that Mephisto is the foremost of them. The problem though is that Diablo is well on his way through the gate before Mephisto says anything. It seems less of a command, and more of a... encouragement, for lack of a better word.

Angels
Angels are different from their popular depiction. To the left we have Hadriel, the only angel we've ever seen in Diablo game except for Izual in his spirit form and Tyrael himself.

The key features of the angels are illustrated here though: a hood or helmet with no face but only a silhouette inside it, only black, a body covered in armor, and the iconic shining wings that are not really wings with feathers, but tendrils made of light. The description is solidified in the Sin War however when the Heavenly Host arrives to Sanctuary and are described by Uldyssian:

Quote from name="Scales of the Serpent, page 51" »

They were angels, as humans portrayed them at least. The Prophet, more the wiser, acknowledged the artisan’s exceptional attempt, but an attempt was all it truly was. A mere mortal could not have grasped the true essence of such beings. A mere mortal could not conceive of creatures who were not exactly physical in nature, but instead harmonic resonances.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 302" »

And through that tear flowed an astounding, breathtaking swarm of magnificent beings whose armor gleamed brighter than the sun and whose many wings created a dazzling display of colors unmatched upon the mortal plane.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 307" »

The celestial host dove in perfect order, row upon row spreading out in every direction over Sanctuary. All held ready fiery weapons — from swords to lances to scythes and more — which somehow Uldyssian understood were actually manifestations of their individual powers.

In terms of angels, there's is little to be had, and next to nothing about any of them before the last few chapters of the Veiled Prophet, save regarding Inarius and Tyrael.

Inarius

Quote from name="Scales of the Serpent, page 51" »

In his place stood a looming, hooded figure with vast wings of flame. Within the hood there was no face, instead a radiance—formed from the blending of both light and sound—so wondrous that it would have been almost blinding to most humans. What appeared to be long, silver hair draping around it was also no more than pure light and sound mixing together.

He was clad in breastplate and robes, the former a shimmering copper, the latter as if sewn from the very rays of the sun. In mortal terms, what had been the prophet seemed now some divine warrior, and in truth, he had faced many a harsh battle against the demons of the Burning Hells.

This description is of course akin to the one I made above, and it's not really how Hadriel looks. It is close, but Inarius' hood is evidently not black inside, and whether Hadriel's wings can be called fiery is debatable. Regardless however, while there may be small differences, both are evidently angels.

Who was Inarius though? For those of you who don't know, I advise you check the first article in this series, as I go in heavily on his part. In short however, he can be called the (main) creator, or shaper, of Sanctuary.

He is also a rebel however, a rebel who left the High Heavens. Before then, it is often claimed by fans that he was a member of the Angiris Council, the highest ruling body in Heaven. While it is certain that he had some position there, it is unclear just how high his rank was.

Quote from name="Birthright, page 157" »

And in announcing it to himself, he felt a rush of jubilation. He was again Inarius, once of the Angiris Council, once a commander of the Heavenly Hosts!

Quote from name="Birthright, page 158" »

Making contact with such—either those of his own kind or, especially, the demons—proved a tricky situation, but Inarius had not been an advisor to the Council for nothing.

This does not make any sense. How can he both be a member and an advisor to the Council? It seems as if one of the statements must be false, but both thoughts come from Inarius himself.

There are several possible ways to solve this apparent problem.

1. All members are advisors, even Tyrael, Imperius etc.
2. The Council employs advisors to aid in their decisions. By this line of thought, Inarius would not have had any executive power in the Council similar to what Tyrael displays.
3. The term advisor is simply a mistake that slipped by the editors.

The first I am ready to refuse outright. The Angiris is the highest ruling body in Heaven, there is no god or supreme being that they report to. Thus they cannot all be advisors, unless advisor was a title. However, as such it should be capitalized (the Angiris Council is always shortened to Council with a capital C in the books, likewise should advisor have been had it been a formal title). It is not however, and so I rule out that alternative.

The second option is more probable. The Angiris are only five, and they cannot possibly handle all decisions that must be made. For all their vaunted power,neither Angiris nor Prime seem to be all that much more intelligent than humans, and their mental capabilites are not so vast as to be able to handle all decisions. Thus, work must be relegated to other angels. In this sense, we can imagine that an advisor such as Inarius would have similar duties to a member of the Cabinet in the US; he very much has real power, but the five councilors of the Angiris are his superiors.

The last option is that this is just a typo on Blizzard's behalf. While it is possible (the term advisor is only used once in the entire series), drawing this conclusion seems weird. "Blizzad only mentioned it once, and I don't like the idea, so they probably didn't mean it."

Lastly though, a point against Inarius having been a fully-fledged member: who in their right mind creates a council, which makes it's decisions based on voting, with an even numbr of members? Why create a council with six members, when five or seven is much preferable? This I believe speak in favor of the second point. This of course means that there would be other advisors to the Council, and why not? Reasonably they must have councilors, no rules can know everything, and Inarius having such a position seems very reasonable.

Tyrael

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 175" »

A brilliant light blossomed from there, one that made Serenthia immediately tighten her grip on her spear. In the midst of that light, she saw the tall figure emerge. Vast wings composed of tendrils of energy rose up behind him.

Notice the difference in description here between Inarius and Tyrael. Not wings of fire, but of energy. It could be that they mean the same thing, but at the same time we have up-to-date artwork that clearly shows different wings for different angels. Tyrael, whom we can see at www.diablo3.com, clearly does not have wings of fire, while much artwork of what must be other angels show wings that are dazzling in color and could very well be described as fiery.

This also brings stark contrast to how Inarius looks. Tyrael has a completely black inside of his cowl, while Inarius was described to have a combination of bright light and sound inside. But enough of that, mots of you know how Tyrael looks simply by having visited Blizzard's site.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 306" »

Uldyssian could not see the other angel, but he felt his power. Tyrael was naturally far stronger than Inarius. Uldyssian might have still defeated him easily, but the second angel had wisely used the Prophet’s fury to hide his own efforts until it was too late for the human to notice.

Interestingly, Uldyssian judges Tyrael to not only be stronger than Inarius, but far stronger. This, should be noted, is right after Uldysssian severs Inarius' link to the Worldstone, so this does not take into account the added power Inarius received from there during most of the books.

The Angiris Council
Another point I wish to raise here though is the epithetof angels. We all know the Three and their domains: Destruction, Hatred and Terror, as well as the lesser demons: Anguish, Lies, Pain and Sin. But what of the angels, do they not have similar domains?

It has long been theorized that they do, and there is some support for it.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 71?" »

“Yes. Tyrael. I believe that the Angel of Justice has come on his own to judge his brother’s crimes…and, in the process, Sanctuary.”

Notice the capital J, this is most certainly a title of Tyrael. At it seems reasonable that Justice is his domain, for there are other passages in the books that continually speak of his as bringing justice.

If Tyrael has an epithet like the demons however, it seems vey reasonable that all high-ranking angels do as well. So let's break down the Council and see what we can figure out

Imperius

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 326" »

THERE IS NO NEED FOR THIS DEBATE TO CONTINUE…. OR TO HAVE EVEN BEGUN, declared a majestic angel with robes of royal red and a shining breastplate upon which the image of an upturned sword blazed.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 328" »

Imperius did not reply, but if he had had a face, Mendeln felt certain that it would have glowered.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 331" »

Imperius summoned a sword of fire.

Commonly, Imperius has been thought of as the Angel of War, at least here on DFans. His demeanor supports a war-like nature, but I do not think it is as simple as that. War seems not quite fit as an epithet. Terror is not a domain of Heaven, and Justice is no cause of Hell, but both sides deal avidly in war. It seems weird that an angel should be specifically linked to war, while a demon is not. And even so, the two sides should be opposite one another.

What could Imperius be then instead? I have a few suggestions:

Devotion
Order
Courage
Strenght

Imperius very name (Imperial, Empire) speaks of of order and power, and he is certainly has Heaven's best wishes in mind when he votes. He's strong of character, but if I had to pick one, I'd guess he was the Angel of Order. Sanctuary is, for all intents and purposes, a disruption to the order that Heaven represents.

Auriel

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 327" »

SHOULD WE NOT DEAL WITH THE RENEGADE FIRST, IMPERIUS? asked one whose robes were a softer blue and who seemed, as angels appeared, a female.

Auriel, like Imperius, also has a common attribute given to her, and that is Love. I am inclined to agree here somewhat, though Benevolence might also be her domain, as she is sympathetic of Sanctuary from the start and argues most fervently for it.

Itherael

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 328" »

LET IT BE SO, interjected a gray-clad angel who seemed neither male nor female in aspect.

This one is tought. There is very little to go by, but when Itherael makes his final decision (he votes in support of Sanctuary) he calmly considers all the facts and the situation. I propose that he is the Angel of Reason. Demons think, true, but they are also very impulsive and sudden. Itherael's entire being speaks of calm and contemplation. The gray robes also indicate this; he arrives at logical conclusions, regardless of what results that might yield.

Malthael

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 328" »

The female angel looked to a fourth member of their council, a very gaunt figure whose robes were black and whose breastplate was likewise colored.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 328"" »

A visible shiver ran through not only Mendeln but also the rest when the angel Malthael spoke. His voice brought nightmares of death to Mendeln — a permanent, empty death.

It seems probably this is the angel of death, the colors and descriptions fit. Still, this is also in contrast to Hell; they dabble in death just as much if not more so, yet the epithet of death would belong to Heaven? It doesn't seem right, but I can't think of what else to give to him.

Summary
This article hasn't been aimed at a specific target, but has instead simple explained various features about demons and angels. I cannot really summarize what s written here.

Next Time
I am not really sure what will come next time. This article created some additional aspects I wish to explore, but I do not know if they warrant an article of their own. You will just have to wait and see what comes next.

Three weeks ago I began to disseminate the inner workings of the Diablo Universe with a starting post about how the world was created. I advise you to read it, but here's the quick rundown of it:

1. The Universe was at one point created
2. Sanctuary was not created by Inarius and Lilith in the absolute sense; the world existed prior to them, and they merely shaped it.
3. There are other worlds like Sanctuary in the Universe, with guardians similar to Trag'Oul on them. Both Heaven and Hell seem to be unaware of these worlds, or at the very least unaware of the guardians.
4. The War between Heaven and Hell concerns more than just Sanctuary, perhaps all of the Universe.

This time, I will delve deeper into the specifics of each world, and how they function. Some of them you undoubtedly know of, such as the Void and the Abyss, while some are more unknown, such as reflection of sorts of Sanctuary, which appears briefly in the Sin War novels.

As before, this post will be heavy with spoilers from the Sin War novels. If you have not read them and do not wish to have it spoiled to you, I advise you not to read more.

Worlds
Trag'Oul's Realm
The Dream World
The High Heavens and the Burning Hells
The Void
The Abyss
The Afterdeath
Summary
Next Time

Worlds
First, we must establish what a world is exactly. It does not appear to be just as simple as planets floating around in space. Not entirely at least.

There are various mentions throughout the books about various planes of existence. It is not make specifically clear what separates one plane from another, but I think a plane is just one aspect of the same world. Sanctuary in this sense is a world, yet at least four different planes make it up. The mortal plane is the first, but Trag'Oul's realm, the "dream plane" (my own name for another plane mentioned) and the afterdeath also appear to be directly related to the mortal plane of Sanctuary which we normally see in the story.

The other places, such as Heaven and the Void, will need special mention.

Trag'Oul's Realm

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 167" »

There is no choice! he insisted. There is no choice! I must act! I must go to the mortal plane.

This is Trag'Oul speaking, when he tries to enter Sanctuary but is immediately stopped by the other guardians. It is here clearly shown that Sanctuary is part of the mortal plane.

At the same time, this quote also establishes that Trag'Oul's realm is not part of the same plane, and Trag'Oul definitely does not inhabit a planet. The following three quotes all describe Trag'Oul's realm.

Quote from name="The Scales of the Serpent, page 118" »

Darkness surrounded Mendeln, darkness that felt as if it went on forever. Uldyssian's brother
suspected that if he ran and ran as hard as he could for as long as possible, he would find no change in things. It would still be dark and empty. A part of him was unnerved by that...but another part was morbidly fascinated.

Quote from name="Birthright, page 275" »

The shrouded figure understood that it might mean waiting for what seemed days, weeks, or even years, but that did not matter. In the other place, that which was called Sanctuary, no time would pass at all.

Quote from name="Birthright, page 275" »

There was no sound, no wind. He felt solid ground beneath his booted feet, but knew that to be illusion. In this place, everything that existed was but the dreams of his teacher.

The teacher being Trag'Oul, and the man waiting being Rathma. Clearly, wherever he is is quite distinct from a regular world such as Sanctuary.

Now, Trag'Oul is time and again throughout the books named to be the guardian of Sanctuary. Not just a guardian, but the guardian. It stands to reason then that the realm which Trag'Oul inhibits, which apparently exists at his wishing, it specifically tied to Sanctuary as well.

The Dream

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 250" »

Serenthia looked as if she slept, but she did not. Regardless of what Uldyssian had said, she could not merely leave things be. Achilios had been reckless, true, but Serenthia would not abandon him because of that trait. After all, he had always been reckless, but also extremely loyal. And so, while her body lay still, her mind went in search of the man she loved.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 251" »

And then she saw the hole.

It was not truly physical but bordered between that and some plane of existence almost akin to that which she currently inhabited.

This is Serenthia talking. During this passage, she is currently appearing to sleep while letting her mind travel a shadow of Sanctuary in search of Achilios. In this state, she is able to overview the landscape quickly, as if flying.

Both Trag'Oul's realm and this dream state that Serenthia is in are two distinct places, however they also both appear to be linked to Sanctuary. Serenthia is traveling a world that has the same landscape and geography as the waking world, which clearly links it to Sanctuary.

The High Heavens and The Burning Hells
What exactly are these two realms? At first impression, one would like to say that they are worlds. They are clearly not tied only to Sanctuary, as planes seems to be. Regardless of which, I will assume that regardless of what their nature, they are identical in to each other in this aspect. If Heaven is a world and not a plane, then Hell is per definition as well.

First, there is appears to be evidence that they are worlds:

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 240" »

Sanctuary is no...no longer shielded from their...sight! The Heavenly Host knows they were misled. Trag'Oul's grief at his failure was so very evident. The winged warriors are closing in on our world.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 241" »

Tyrael could sense the others fast approaching, and the only question he had was why it had taken them so long. There was more to this place - this Sanctuary, as he now knew it to be called by the renegade - than appearances suggested. There was some force, some vast reservoir of power, that Inarius had come upon that might be the reason. Tyrael was still investigating that. Likely it was what had caused the delay of the host. In the long run, it would not matter.

What is made clear here is that it actually takes time to travel to Sanctuary from Heaven at least. This is crucial, because travel between planes appears to be instantaneous. Whenever Mendeln goes to see Trag'Oul, there is no delay. And Serenthia barely even seems to close her eyes before she can travel the dream world. If Heaven and Hell were planes in the sense I'm using the word, there should be no travel time. Yet there is.

However, there is a potential issue here some other issues that speak against it being as simple as that, and it comes from the previous passage.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 251" »

And then she saw the hole.

It was not truly physical but bordered between that and some plane of existence almost akin to that which she currently inhabited.

This is exactly the same quote as above describing the dream plane. What is troubling is that the hole mentioned here borders to Hell. Seeing as Serenthia is at this point in what appears to be a reflection of the waking Sanctuary, what I previously called the Dream plane, and that Hell seems to share similarities to it, one can wonder if Hell isn't actually a plane after all.

Perhaps we simply do not know enough of Heaven and Hell to draw any conclusions though. Considering their names are plural, it's possible that Heaven and Hell stretch across many planets, or that they have a lot of different planes as well. The plane Serenthia sees is perhaps one of those planes.

The Void

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 235" »

Listen to me! demanded the dragon in a tone that cut off any further protest by the human. Look about you! See where you are!

Uldyssian's brother did just that - and only then registered that the blackness in which he floated was not the domain of Trag'Oul. This place radiated such emptiness that Mendeln suddenly clutched his arms tight around his body and wished fitfully for the relative cheer of the dragon's home.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 1235" »

What is this place?

Trag'Oul's voice sounded fainter, as if he were farther away now. What could be called the remotest part of existence! A place so far from all else that to be trapped here is to be cursed forever.

Mention of the Void is scant, but it plays a large part in the story of the Sin War. In one part, quoted above, Mendeln is sent to the Void by Trag'Oul to find and rescue Rathma, who has been imprisoned there by Inarius.

"Where is the Void?" exactly is perhaps a question as hard to answer as "Where is the Universe?" would be. Perhaps, if my earlier assumption about worlds and planes is correct, it is a plane so far removed and tenuously connected to the rest of the Universe as anything can be and still exist. Or, it is some emptiness between planes.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 235" »

The strain...the strain of reaching out all the way here is...is growing worse. Mendeln ul-Diomed, you must act as the link between myself [Trag'Oul]...and Rathma...if we are to save him.

It also appears to be quite hard to reach. Trag'Oul has to strain himself to even touch the place, and the only other being we know of to send beings there is Inarius, who is very powerful.

The Abyss

Quote from "Tyrael" »

For his transgressions, Izual's spirit was bound within the form of a terrible creature which was summoned from the Abyss. His maddened spirit has resided within that tortured husk for many ages now.

Quote from name="Arreat Summit" »

Spawned from the very bowels of the skulking Stygian Beast who awakens only once every 1000 years to feed off the spawn of its own bile and pus, the Reziarfg is truly the most hideous and vile monster in all of the Three?s bestiary. It was once said that the Three did not always rule the darkness that beasts beyond thought swelled and slithered across the void. It is believed that some of these nightmares may still exist hidden deep with in the pitch of the abyss where even the darkness of the upper realms of hell seems like day. This is where Reziarfg lives.

These are the only two mentions I could find of the Abyss, and the second quote is from an April Fools! There is never a mention of the Abyss in the Sin War novels.

EDIT
emilemil1 reminded me of a quote by Tyrael, the very last dialogue in Diablo II.

Quote from "Tyrael" »

Praise be to the Light! You have accomplished the impossible! Diablo and Mephisto have been banished back into the Black Abyss that spawned them and the corrupted Soulstones are no more. You've done well, hero. For now, you should rejoice.

What exactly can be extrapolated from this I do not know, since I cannot take the April Fools info as reliable without confirmation from Blizzard. That leaves what Tyrael says. He is probably one of the most reliable sources in this matter however, so this does hint at the Abyss, which is probably the same as the Black Abyss, is a spawning ground for demons. Perhaps it is an all-encompassing plane like the Void might be, or perhaps it is some galactic churning ground that constantly keeps Hell and Heaven filled with soldiers ready to battle each other.

Still, it's difficult to know if all demons come from there, or only some, or if the Abyss is specifically tied to Hell.

The Afterdeath
It has been speculated on what happens to humans after they die. There is the idea that dead people go to either Heaven or Hell, based on the observation of the tortured souls that the player can kill in Act IV in Diablo II. However, it seems to be a little more complex than that.

Quote from name="Scales of the Serpent, page 170" »

They have accepted you who hears them - the children of angels and demons slain so foully - accepted that you will keep Sanctuary from becoming either the fury of the Burning Hells or the oppressive order and worship of the High Heavens. They who were the first birthed in Sanctuary and are, because of that, still more of it than either Lilith or Inarius can understand, forever open the link between the phase of afterdeath and that of living?

"'Afterdeath'?" Mendeln repeated, but the glittering stars did not further explain that term and Mendeln finally understood that he should define it as best he could on his own.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 143" »

For a thing like Achilios, though, Uldyssian's brother hoped that by actually reversing the animation spell, he would send the archer back to the afterdeath.

There are a few other passages mentioning the afterdeath, and all point to the same thing. Dead humans at least, including Nephalem, go to that place, whatever it is.

However, it is made clear that necromancers call being from the afterdeath. There is another quote which hints at something else as well:

Quote from name="Scales of the Serpent, page 265" »

"He [Achilios] is nowhere to be found," Rathma reported, more to Trag?Oul than to Mendeln.

You have gazed upon all planes?

"Naturally. I have also summoned him in a hundred manners, some of which put me at risk. It was necessary to do so, though the results were not as I wished."

The dragon was oddly silent for a time. Then, You realize, my friend, that there are few other paths?

Rathma nodded. "Yes, the most preferable one is that somehow he has passed on to that place from which even you could not summon him back. Certainly, it would be his reward for what he had so far
done."

This then, is clearly not the afterdeath, since a necromancer, and hence Trag'Oul, would be able to call him back from there. There is no other mention of this place, except that Nephalem do not go there. They are forever part of the afterdeath.

Curiously this quote also lends evidence to the idea that the afterdeath is also a plane, and going by my earlier proposition of planes being linked to Sanctuary, it makes sense even here. Demons are never raised from the, but plenty of humans are. Reasonably, only humans are accessible from the afterdeath, linking it to Sanctuary. Whatever happens to demons is unknown.

That being said, it is often stated, particularly in Diablo II, that humans meddling with demons often face miserable futures. Perhaps these humans are dragged to hell, purposefully by demons, to punish those who meddle in the affairs of the Three.

Summary
1. Worlds are made up of several planes.
2. Sanctuary is a world, with four known planes linked to it: the mortal plane, Trag'Oul's realm, the Dream plane, and the afterdeath.
3. Heaven and Hell are most likely worlds as well, with their own sets of planes making them up.
4. The Void is a place as far away from anything else as is possible. It's unknown what it is, but there's nothing there save for a few unlucky imprisoned souls. It might be a plane, or it might just be some emptiness between planes.
5. The Abyss is still a mystery. Nothing conclusive is known about it.
6. Dead humans seem to first go to the afterdeath, and eventually fade to some other place beyond the reach of angels, demons and even Trag'Oul.

Next Time
Now that we've cleared the two more abstract topics in this series, I will focus on what most of you are probably more interested in. The next article will be about angels, demons and other divinities, in particular the more powerful of them all.

Diablofans received an upgrade last year during Blizzcon, with a new main page. It's long overdue, but the wiki has now finally received a similar face lift, casting off it's previous drabness that has held since last summer.
Enter the Portal. With a new design that allows for quick and easy overview, as well as select articles appearing as featured on a daily basis, the wiki finally sheds itself of it's old and scrawny look it has held practically since it's inception. The main page becomes increasingly focused on Diablo III and the subjects that are relevant to the entire series: Lore and Media. No matter what information would will want to look for about Diablo III, it will be easy enough to find from here.

For those of you who still enjoy the current games, and plan to continue doing so even after Diablo III arrives, fear not. There are similar portals for the two older games in the series, easily reachable by clicking on the appropriate images to the right-hand side. Mods will also take a more prominent place in the new design, with a portal currently up for Median XL, and more pages like this will come as we get more info about other mods into the wiki.

There's also a featured article on the front page, which may also appear on other portal pages as well. There we will showcase a random new article each day (as far as out supply goes). So be sure to visit the wiki everyday to what's posted there.

We've also included a small wiki news box as well. Major updates to the wiki, and perhaps minor as well, will appear there. so you regular users know what's happening without sifting through the Recent Changes

A big thanks goes out to Huck, newly arrived member here at Diablofans. He was at heart both the designer and creator of the new layout, and did it much better than I would have done (or was currently doing as a matter of fact). So be glad you didn't have to live with my design for another year.
The Hell
Some of you may remember the news article we did about The Hell a month ago; a massive mod project for Diablo I that not only overhauls the gameplay, but introduces many new and unusual features such as original music to enhance the mod. Diablo Wiki now expands its mod information by adding a host of articles for The Hell into the wiki. CableCat, who runs the current wiki for the mod, began moving the wiki pages over to Diablo Wiki last week, adding a lot of new mod info. If you play this very well-made mod for Diablo I, be sure to check out the new wiki pages about Diablo: The Hell.


Clans
Last week Jetrall, founder of the new guild Sons of Ohr, took the opportunity to create a wiki page for the guild. Jetrall, never having worked with wiki code before did a pretty good job I must say.

The Brotherhood of Destruction, the other guild with a major presence here on Diablofans, did not to dawdle however. Immediately Kickin It, member of the guild and sysop of the wiki to boot, whipped up a page for their guild as well.

Only time will tell which guild page will look the most bad-ass.

New Sysops
You all may also have noticed the new purple names flying around the forum. I know Zhar gave them a brief introduction yesteday, but here follows a slightly longer account. Give them both a warm welcome.

Huck, as previously mentioned, begun his work hereby designing a new main page, and has now planning on expanding our much struggling D1 section of the wiki. He only speeds up the further he goes; I hope he doesn't get burned out because of it all

As for the recent allegations that Huck is in fact a bot, I have no further comment.

Kickin_It has given his focus as of now on widening our info on D2, recently finishing up on the by far largest article in the wiki: a comprehensive and ordered list of all Affixes (Diablo II) in the game, but also devoting his attention to other game mechanic perspectives. He also knows other assorted crafts, such as how to create guild pages as previously mentioned

The wiki continues to grow. And other changes are on the horizon as well...

Have you ever gone into the Lore and Storyline forum here? I'm sure you have at one point, and when you did, you might have searched for answers to the most pressing questions you had regarding Diablo: What happened to Inarius at the end of the Sin War? Why did Tyrael destroy the Worldstone? What will the Necromancers do in D3? What order should I read the Diablo books in?

All questions valid enough to merit an answer to be sure, but a bit limited in scope, focused in the game and the near future. True, you might have found deeper discussions in there as well, regarding the nature of the soulstones and the relations between demons and angels. But what of the truly large questions, not just how a specific aspect of the world worked, but how the world itself worked? Perhaps you have never considered them.

Allow me then to enlighten you all, for I present to you the cosmology of Diablo. Through a series of analytical posts, I will try to assert the structure and purpose of the entirety of creation in the world of Diablo. To my aid I will use a multitude of quotes and passages from the Sin War Novels, the latest and most encompassing piece of lore released regarding Diablo. This first post will deal with the beginning and general world order of the Universe. My next posts will deal more with the nature of the worlds, the structures of Heaven and Hell, the Worldstone and it's function, and eventually a speculative post about the end of all things, with whatever might present itself in between.

Remember that this is purely a hypothetical line of reasoning. It's as good as dead certain we'll never see any of the following theories actualized or proved in any games or novels. I even doubt that Blizzard has an planned cosmogony or eschatology for either Sanctuary or the world of Diablo itself. Nevertheless, the information we have from the games and books certainly allows us to theorize about the matter.

(If you do not wish to read any spoilers from the the Sin War Novels Birthright, Scales of the Serpent and The Veiled Prophet, I advise you not to read the rest of the post.)

Things to know
The Beginning
The Eternal War
Summary
Next Time

Things to know
Before continuing, there are certain facts about the Diablo Universe that one needs to know before understanding my line of reasoning in this post.

Sanctuary: Strictly refers to the "mortal world" which is the main the setting for all the games and books. This does not include Heaven, Hell, the Void, Trag'Ouls realm or any other worlds that might exist.

Heaven and Hell: Refers to the High Heavens and the Burning Hells only.

Other Worlds: There is indirect evidence that Sanctuary is not simply one of three worlds, but that there are many more worlds beyond those we know of. This will be further explained below.

The Universe: Refers to everything that exists, all worlds.

The Beginning
We must of course start at the beginning, and if there is no beginning there can be no end. So, first question: is there a beginning? Although it may appear a stupid question at first glance, it is a valid question and must be asked.

First, let's look at the Universe as a whole.

Quote from name="Scales of the Serpent, page 192" »

“What is ‘he,’ you want to ask?” Rathma gestured at the ever-shifting form. “Even Trag’Oul does not
entirely know. He has existed since just after the beginning of creation, although not quite as we
sense him now.”
No…that came later…Whenever the dragon spoke, the scales flowed and shifted, constantly displaying other lives, other times. That came with the finding of the Shards…with the molding of Sanctuary by the renegade angels and demons…

Notice Rathma's choice of words. He doesn't say beginning of Sanctuary, or beginning of the world, but beginning of creation, signifying that Trag'Oul comes from the very start, but also that there was a creation to speak of.

If we instead merely look at Sanctuary however, it becomes a much more interesting question and one specific to the Diablo Universe. And naturally, there is a beginning to Sanctuary:

Quote from name="Birthright, page 3" »

The world was young, then, and only a few knew it as Sanctuary or knew that not only did angels and demons exist, but some of them had caused Sanctuary to be in the first place.

The above is from the prologue of Birthright, and comes from the writings of a fictional character named Kalan, most likely someone similar to Abd al-Hazir. But while this text seems to suggest that Sanctuary was caused, i.e created in the sense of a total creation from nothing, it must be taken with a grain of salt considering that it written by a human hand. What he perceives thinks to have happened is not necessarily what has happened.

The apparent problem with Inarius creating the world is that he is not the most powerful being; the other archangels of the Angiris Council, and the Three, are by all accounts his equals or even superiors in terms of power. Why then do the angels and demons not create another world instead of warring over one? Why is Sanctuary so important to conquer? There are several possible explanations to this.

One is that the other high angels and demons can indeed create new worlds, but they cannot fill it with what actually makes Sanctuary important: humans, the Nephalem. Although how one could create an entire world from scratch with physical laws, matter and all plants/animals, but not humans, seems strange. Even supposing that were the case however, why not create a new world in the perfect image of Sanctuary, steal a few humans from the original, then place them in your copy and have them reproduce? Much simpler than fighting with the other side for control of a defiant world.

A second position that seems more plausible is that neither Angel nor Demon can create a new Sanctuary on their own, but by combining their powers they can achieve something much greater. The nephalem, children of both angel and demon, have the potential to become more powerful than their parents, as is first mentioned by Lilith:

Quote from name="Birthright, page 196" »

Obviously aware of this, she continued to talk as if all was well between them, as if he was happy to know that he had lain with a monster. “What you have called a gift, my love, is that and much more! You…all humans…are the spawn of our coupling! From demon and angel came the nephalem, greater than anything ever created in the cosmos! The force I stirred within you, the force which I found begging to be released, is nothing less than your birthright!

Inarius then thinks the same though:

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 78" »

Inarius frowned. The reason for his frown had as much to do with the cause of Gamuel’s doom as the servant’s inadequacy. Lilith’s pawn had done the unthinkable. That meant that Inarius would have to alter his entire strategy. The danger he had always believed the nephalem — or edyrem, as these called themselves — to be had come to pass.

If this is because of the mingling of angel and demon blood, which seems to be the only possible explanation, then it stands to reason that the powers of angels and demons compliment each others. Thus, working together, perhaps they could have made something like Sanctuary.

This explanation seems more credible, as it is unlikely an angel and a demon of Inarius' and Lilith's strength would have cooperated in creating a second world by spawning new humans. The problem here however is that there seems to be a host of other worlds somewhere that remain unknown to any angelic or demonic force, thus could not possibly have been created by either.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 96" »

Filled with an unaccustomed anger, he [Trag'Oul] confronted the voices. This is my burden! This is my duty! You have no say in this, none of you!
There was a moment of silence, and then, together, they responded, But we do…this goes beyond Sanctuary now. Beyond all of us who stand sentinel.
The dragon grew wary. How so? How can that be?
As ever, they answered as one, and, as before, their words struck him as nothing else could. Because the war is coming to Sanctuary, and if you interfere with what the Balance demands, it and all existence may be
forfeit.
...
The eternal war was coming to Sanctuary…and he had just been forbidden to do anything about it.

This leaves little doubt that there are other worlds besides that of Sanctuary, and it also shows that Trag'Oul is linked to Sanctuary, while remaining unknown to Inarius, in fact to any angelic or demonic entity.

Thus we come to the third and most plausible explanation, that Sanctuary was not actually created by Inarius and Lilith at all. This is supported by the improbability of the above two scenarios, as well as a slew of quotes:

Quote from name="Birthright, page 122" »

The one [Lilith] with whom he would help forge a world, a place known to his band of rebels as Sanctuary.

Quote from name="The Scales of the Serpent, page 38" »

So many, in fact, that the angel, Inarius, had finally spurned the eternal war between the High Heavens and their monstrous foes and set about finding a place for himself far from the struggle.

Quote from name="The Scales of the Serpent, page 38" »

I FOUND MY SANCTUARY AND NAMED IT THUS…

Notice the keywords forged and found, not created. It seems to suggest that Sanctuary was discovered rather than made, and only after then remodeled a bit by its new inhabitants; the Worldstone being such an example. What Sanctuary was before Inarius came there is unknown, but I think it reasonable to assume that it probably looked much like Earth would have done without humans. Hell certainly has no grass, animals, plants or similar, and it is unlikely that Heaven has either. Seeing as no angel or demon is omnipotent, it is not feasible to assume they could have created all those things without prior knowledge of them. Even humans, something definitely created by angel and demon, was only a mistake to begin with, and the result, how they eventually came to "function", seems to have been governed by some cosmic force (like genetics or some magical property intrinsic to the Universe) rather than the will of their parents.

Taking this last position also brings with it several benefits. First of all, it explains why no other world has been created; no one can. Second, it explains how it is that Trag'Oul remains unknown: he and the others were not created by Heaven or Hell, and are linked to their own worlds, most likely since whenever they were actually made. But this raises other concerns. It would seem that there is a large amount of other worlds out there, yet all somehow related to Heaven and Hell.

The Eternal War
This quote was shown in the earlier part of the post, but it is highly relevant, so I will show it again.

Quote from name="The Veiled Prophet, page 96" »

Filled with an unaccustomed anger, he [Trag'Oul] confronted the voices. This is my burden! This is my duty! You have no say in this, none of you!
There was a moment of silence, and then, together, they responded, But we do…this goes beyond Sanctuary now. Beyond all of us who stand sentinel.
The dragon grew wary. How so? How can that be?
As ever, they answered as one, and, as before, their words struck him as nothing else could. Because the war is coming to Sanctuary, and if you interfere with what the Balance demands, it and all existence may be forfeit. ...
The eternal war was coming to Sanctuary… and he had just been forbidden to do anything about it.

Notice how the war is called eternal, which would seem to counterprove my earlier point that there was a beginning to both Heaven and Hell. It does not say however that it is the war that the Angiris and the Three are fighting that he is referring to. Oh the angels and demons may well be the carriers of the conflict, but not necessarily that they are the cause. The eternal war can refer to some conflict of order and good that is a factor of the Universe, eternal in the sense that it cannot be ended and has lasted since time began.

Interestingly enough, Trag'Oul is as we know not known to exist by either Heaven or Hell:

“You should understand better than that,” returned Lilith’s son [Rathma] bluntly. “Trag’Oul cannot be known to exist, neither by my dear parents nor the Burning Hells or High Heavens. For the greater good of all Sanctuary—and for its very survival—he must always be hidden from their sight in order to help make certain that the world remains in Balance.”

It is reasonable to conclude that, given that there appear to be other beings very similar to Trag'Oul, none of them are known to Heaven and Hell. Of course, Rathma could be wrong here, but Trag'Oul is never mentioned or even thought of by any angel or demon throughout the Sin War. Perhaps with the increase in Necromancers since then up to our time, the two forces have learned of the dragon in present times, but we know nothing of it if that's the case.

The "others" also mention the Balance, which is the path that necromancers follow. This quote from Trag'oul describes what it is:

Quote from name="The Scales of the Serpent, page 130" »

The stars moved, briefly erasing any semblance to a beast. When they returned to their proper
positions, Trag’Oul replied, The Balance is the even distribution of Light and Dark. Its essence is most significant to Sanctuary, but it goes beyond, to all of creation. A world where Dark rules would burn itself up. A world where Light commands would eventually stagnate. If either gained enough
control of Sanctuary so that the other could not match it again, then that would be the end of all things…

The entire Universe is here then revealed to be dualistic in nature: not only are Heaven and Hell two forces that fight over Sanctuary, a random world, but they are the two driving forces of the Universe, the two powers against which all others, regardless of who they are or where they are, must stand. That is what the eternal war most likely amounts to. The Universe is not beyond time, but for as long as it exists, this war will be waged by both Heaven and Hell. This may not be a surprise; after all it is quite common knowledge that Heaven and Hell fight a great war. What is revealed however is that this war concerns all world, or at least all worlds that have watchers like Trag'Oul. It is impossible to say whether all worlds that do exist have such guardians, but many do it appears.

Summary
To summarize.

1. The Universe is not eternal, it had a point of creation.
2. Sanctuary was not created completely by angels and demons, but merely discovered and shaped by them.
3. There are other worlds like Sanctuary, with guardians similar to Trag'Oul, all linked to the conflict between Heaven and Hell. The angelic and demonic forces seem to be unaware of these guardians.
4. The war between Heaven and Hell not only concerns Sanctuary, but other worlds as well, perhaps all other worlds.

Next Time
Next time I will deal with the nature of all worlds, how they correlate, and where the Void and Abyss fit into it all.

(Image courtesy of Jetrall)

Another year with Diablofans has drawn to a close, and with it comes the the beginning of a new year. The past twelve months have been very eventful, and we've seen many changes to the site. The site management changed as Sixen joined our site. We did a restructuring of the staff, resulting in the new News Reporters coming on to the team and working to give you constant updates on all things Diablo. We received a complete site redesign during Blizzcon.

But, most importantly (subject to bias), we received the most awesome change in the beginning of 2009: The Diablofans Wiki was launched.

In truth, it began in 2008, on the 1st of July. In this post, by an unknown user vrel. I liked the suggestion, took it and refined in a bit. The original plan became to create a sort of guide sub-forum where users could post lore info, character guides etc. It was Genesis who first suggested a wiki in the Moderator forum however.

Quote from Genesis »

How do wikipedias work? Are you sure that theres no way to have something like this

www.diablofans.com/wiki/"article name here"

I think that its in the realms of possibility. I'm sure a DiabloFans Wiki would surpass the other Diablowiki

(In retrospect, opting for a wiki rather than a forum proved to have immense benefits. So we made the right choice. Can you imagine having a thousand articles in a forum, sorted, searchable, and linking to each other? And getting that to work smoothly?)

After some discussing around, and Curse going with it, the wiki was actually created 21:13 on November 7th (GMT +1 I believe). And the very first article of all was written 0:50 a.m on November 8th, and fittingly, it was about Diablo himself. You can read the original Diablo (old) here, and the current article about Diablo here. Well, that is unless you count the main page as an article. Technically it was the first page to be created, but I don't know if anyone would call this an article

Although the wiki was set up in November, but was at the time only known of to the staff. It was publicly viewable however, so if anyone had entered wiki.diablofans.com in their URL bar, they would have been taken to it at that time. Not that there would have been much to see in it though; the wiki was bare, and the staff were tasked with adding a few articles to it before launch.

On January 12th, the wiki was launched. At the time we had only been able to create a few articles that had been previously written by staff, and few were any good. We were all stumbling in the dark, and no one really knew how to manage a wiki. The announcement itself was made amidst mixed reactions. Some were happy and expectant, others thought it was a dumb idea.

Progress was slow, or rapid, depending on how you see it in the following months. As early as April we already had a thousand articles.

But wait a minute now you say, that means 10 articles were created a day on average? Probably yes; however a lot of the early pages were imported from diablo.wikia, most by then-sysop Blackwing. However, the imports were quite sporadic and incomplete, for example a page might be imported, but the tables and images on it might not, resulting in a lot of broken, incomplete and generally ugly pages. So while we had gotten a lot of new pages really fast, the actual progress of the wiki as a whole might not have been as great.

The copying of pages didn't really help anyone and just made us into a copy of diablo.wikia, we stopped doing that shortly thereafter. Since then, there's been a slow but successive cleanup and structuring of the wiki, with lots of pages being merged together. This in turn has led to a not so large article-count, but with hopefully better pages. Here's an example of a merged page: Bows (Diablo II). It essentially carries 24 articles in it, if you consider each bow could have been a separate page.

During the year, we've also had a great many users who've helped out with the wiki, some of whom have been sysops. I'd like to give thanks to them, and all others who I know have contributed to the wiki. Unfortunately, or maybe I should say fortunately, you're too many to list

• Dauroth, for his many edits and and contributions as a sysop
• Lt. Venom, for his many edits and ability to put in a massive effort during crunch time
• zhuge, for his continued sysop role and regular contributions
• Yemen, for making lots of boring edits that needed to be done, and for indirectly giving birth to the current wiki design
• Rousse, for his short but insightful edit period earlier this year
• blood-doll, for taking the time to add depth to the wiki and not just numbers in tables
• Seth, for his extensive guide and skill editing, and wiki support in the forum
• Zhar, for his brief edit sysop period and for continuing to showcase the wiki.
• skyknight, who just today making a lot of edits and is working towards expanding the Eastern Sun section of the wiki.

Thanks to all of you, to all of you who make the occasional spelling fix here and there, and for those anonymous users who also contribute. It's great day when one goes into Recent Changes and see the page filled up with wonderful edits.

The wiki continues to move on, and the following year will see a stronger development. We still have a long ways to go before it can even be considered remotely complete or full, but it's all achievable, and a lot has already been done in the previous year. I urge you all to take a closer look at what the wiki has to offer, but also what it lacks. Anyone can edit it, and it's supposed to be edited by anyone. So go ahead and start editing already

These last few weeks have, as you've all noticed, changed Diablofans radically. Some Mods have left, many Admins have left, and new Admins have arrived in their stead. I see a lot of you are either worried or saddened by this development, but let's step back for a while and look at the history of our beloved site. For those of you who haven't been around all that long, let me tell you what has happened here over the years...

2005
It all started in 2005. This is as far as I've been able to tell the first post ever. It was made in June 2005. This was way before my time, so I can't really tell what happened in those days. I can tell you however that the forum would quickly pick up its pace however.

2006
October 22nd, 2006. About one year after the site launched, I joined. At that time, this place was very different from now. We weren't Diablofans at that time; as most of you know, we were known as www.diablo3.com prior to the announcement of Diablo III in those days. Back then, this forum was a chatroom more than anything. Most oldtimers, many of whom have left this forum since then, would have referred to this as the glorious days of our site history. There was a certain air of mystery, and nerdiness, to it all back then. Here we were, hopeful fans of Diablo who were avidly waiting for a game no one knew whether it would come or not (though many of us did of course expect Blizzard to come through sooner or later).

This era was dominated by much different members from today. Most prominent was perhaps Elfen Lied, the post giant who had achieved a miraculous 4,000 posts in less than a year, with darkjay right behind him with 3,000. SICK was at the time a major part of this site, and members like Carloseus and SilVerSurFnStud were prominent figures of it. FingolfinGR was our sole WoW player who constantly had to defend WoW against all comparisons and attack, and muttonchops bashed ignorant posts like no other. There were many more, these were just a handful.

SICK merits another mention. At the time, it was the Official Guild of diablo3.com, and had its very own forum (it has since been closed down and locked due to inactivity, but is kept to save post histories and the because of its integral history with the site). SICK, standing for Silver Inferno Crusading Knights (named after SilVerSurFnStud, who held a reputation similar to or above what Seth does today) was for a time quite successful. There were many members, and many of us, including myself and Jetrall, designed logos and wanted SICK to evolve to eventually become the premier guild for Diablo 3. Most of the success in SICK happened in the chapter SLAYERS, led by Carloseus and Thasador.

As some of you might suspect however, not everyone was a fan, mainly due to the name of the guild. It simply didn't suit most people.

There were no rules in those days either. Every thread with a topic possessing the slightest hint of flammable material ended in flames, which is precisely the reason I think a lot of members from that time look back at it with fondness if you will. The mods the time we only Silver and Elfen, along with Umaro who was the community master at the time together with mockery, a guy we'd never even heard from (he was an admin, he just didn't post).

Another thing specific to this time were the rumors; the site basically lived off of them. The most prominent was this rumor, presented by General_Ryan. The rumor mill went wild, and although most of us probably saw the strangeness and obvious holes of it, we all wanted D3 badly.

2007
The site trudged on, and during this time, the WWI in Korea happened in mid-2007. A lot of people were expecting the event to be about D3, although the more seasoned of us accurately predicted it would be about the announcement of Starcraft 2. The Korean stage said it all.

Shortly after that, I left the site. I had originally joined out of boredom on a random day, and as summer came up I didn't really feel like posting any more. For me, the matter of Diablo 3 had simply reached an end. I had discussed every topic there was at the time, and no new threads actually came with anything new I felt. One would think that would be the end of my Dfans history, but not so. Several months later, I got a mail saying: "You have been promoted to Moderator at diablo3.com"

I was like wtf? Why the hell would I get that position after leaving the site for almost half a year? Well as it turns out, new mods had been recruited to steer the site up. I was promoted along with Siaynoq, Equinox, Thasador and Ferret. I never knew why I was picked, but I've always secretly credited Elfen Lied for the executive decision on that.

Anyway here we were, a few bright eyed mods so to speak supposed to start policing people. None of us had any prior experience, and if I may say so the previous two mods, Silver and Elfen, weren't exactly all that seasoned either.

Actually that last part isn't entirely true. Equinox had previous moderation experience, and as we put out some of the first formal rules for the site, she started moderating. And did shit hit the fan or what? It was a forum uproar. People were pissed off; half the forum population were mad at Equinox for her strict moderation, and the other half got pissed at the first half for always bringing it up and making such a fuss about it and flaming every thread Equinox appeared in. There were several reasonsfor all of this, partly it was because the forum had never been moderated before, and partly because the change hit home so hard to many users when infractions and bans suddenly appeared on the site. Lot's of internal problems for the moderators too as well, and I confess that I handled my moderator status badly at the time.

2008
But things moved on. Equinox stepped down, the forum population quieted. New members came in, many of who we've all now "lost". Jetrall rose during this year to become one of the most respected artists on this site, initially I think due to him creating the Evil Tyrael boxart. He quickly became admin during this year, along with others to follow soon thereafter.

Spring brought with it some manner of hype. mockery, who had at this time become active in the site, posted up a countdown on diablo3.com. The rumors went wild. Diablo3.com was at this time watched by most of the other Diablo gaming sites, since we were the only ones with the countdown. And after much speculation and anxiety, mockery revealed on the 1st of May that diablo3.com had been acquired by Blizzard and that we were officially changing name to Diablofans.com. The change was an immediate pointer to what was about to come later the same year.

Atrumentis, AcidReign, Genesis, Requiem, Rykker (at the time known as Anakyn), Stormcat and tkrow21 (at the time known as AlphaX) all joined the team during this time, along with Equinox once again. The massive staff increase was in response to the big announcement Blizzard made at their World Wide Invitational in Paris that year, which many had accurately predicted was Diablo III.

Diablo III. How we had waited. How we had longed. And to think, just as it was announced, the site crashed. We'd never had traffic like that before. In 2007 when Starcraft 2 was announced, the site peaked at around 2,358 visitors at the same time, and that proved very taxing. This time, the top amount of visitors was 5,854, more than the double, and the server took such a load that most of the time you couldn't access the forums at all.

The result? Signatures were limited, and avatars were completely turned off. For several months, we didn't have any avatars on the site, and people became increasingly hard to identify. Turns out those images actually have a very important function as a substitute for human faces.

Daemaro quickly rose in posts and presence on the forum after the announcement, and was made moderator later the same year after having partaken in practically every single topic on Diablo III since the announcement. In a short time he was also made admin, a decision not supported by the entire forum.

When summer ended after the big announcement of Diablo 3, Diablofans was secretly acquired by Curse.com. I say secretly because no one knew anything about it. mockery hadn't told anyone, but suspicions grew that something had happened when new admins started popping up and links to curse began appearing on the site.

At about the same time, Medievaldragon, who had done extensive reporting for diablo3.com and always kept us up to date on all the news and hints, left us. He was offered a job position at Incgamers. Medievaldragon, who runs www.blizzplanet.com, had previously had his site hosted by Umaro, and was as such a sister site of diablo3.com. Working there was a conflict of interests, and Medievaldragon had to give up his position here sadly.

In the later months of 2008, there was talk of starting a wiki for Diablofans. I myself argued for it for a long time, however it was Atrumentis who started it all up. He was at the time an active contributor to diablo.wikia.com, and brought up the discussions we had had at Diablofans to the other sysops there. The whole deal hit a snag though, as neither part wanted to lose their hosting rights. mockery wanted the wiki to be hosted by diablofans, and wikia naturally had nothing to gain by giving up their wiki hosting. The result was in essence that any sysop at diablo wikia was welcome to come and work here, and we were to copy some basic articles over to our wiki to get ourselves started.

2009
With the beginning of the new year, the new wiki was unveiled and work begun. In a very short amount of time, the number of articles grew almost exponentially, and four months later we already had a thousand articles. The whole deal was however not very solid. Most of the articles were completely copied from Diablo Wikia, something no one would benefit from. The result was that we only got a wiki of sub-par quality, with lots of holes missing, while at the same time not appearing very professional. The page importation stopped shortly thereafter, when Blackwing, former sysop, was banned due to several reasons. He had been responsible for most, if not all, of the page imports, and after that, the growth of the wiki slowed down considerably.

In march this year, a new wave of mods were recruited; LinkX, Murderface and Seth (at the time known as Magistrate) were recruited. To this date, no new moderators have been appointed after that. Their recruitment was, as oppsed to earlier, not in response to any massive outbreaks of forum problems or similar, marking it as the smoothest recruitment to date.

The forum once again trudged along smoothly for a few months, until late summer again, when lots of changes took place. And fast. Curse had over the last few weeks increased their presence on the forums, and just before Blizzcon 2009 a new site design was launched, removing the last remnants of the old skin from diablo3.com which has still to that day still been useable (it was known as SpeedVision, a skin used by a select few dedicated users, most notably LinkX).

New site admins appeared; in addition to DoranM, Rapture came to work with the site from Curse as well. He and Tyveris were the ones responsible for the site redesign, and an interview with Jay Wilson was supposed to followed soon thereafter. However it has yet to be posted, as mockery was the one in possession of it.

Recently after, mockery was removed as the site's main administrator. With him, the original ownership of the site was gone; Umaro, previous co-owner, had disappeared earlier in 2008. At the same time as this, many other disappearances affected Diablofans.
Daemaro, who had contemplated stepping down for a few months finally did so and was demoted to moderator status.
Jetrall, long admin of the site, relinquished his position completely and left Dfans for the time.
Seth, arguably the most iconic Staff member at this time, also gave up his position at this time. Not before he was immortalized with his own hammy smiley however:
Zoltrix, who had previously been the admin of starcraft2.com (before it shut down) stepped down on the same day as Seth and Daemaro.

Finally, the admin list was extended with Sixen, replacement for mockery, and that is where we stand today.

It's been a long and winding road for our site, and I think we'll continue to shift and change as the years go on. It's weird when I think about this site; I have spend so much time on these forums and on the wiki; much more time than I've ever played Diablo II or any other game for that matter. And this site has undoubtedly fostered an interest in Diablo that I know I didn't possess before joining, and has become a part of my own history.

Some time in the future I will certainly reminisce about my time here on Diablofans. Let's just hope that time hasn't come yet, for any of us

Hellforge posted an interview yesterday with Leonard Boyarsky, Lead World Designer on Diablo III. The interview deals mostly with quests, lore and the Diablo world. Some very interesting aspects are brought up, so enjoy. Also big thanks to mad3nch1na for posting this :thumbsup:

The original interview available here. I have removed much of the original interview from Diablofans courtesy to Sol Invictus. The full version is available at the link above. Two questions really caught my attention however.

Question 5

With regards to the lore stuff that you mentioned earlier: is it like a book that you carry around that has all the journal entries and all the stuff you encounter. Is there gonna be anything like that in DIII?

Leonard Boyarsky: Yeah, that's what we're working on the interface of that right now. We've gone through a lot of iterations on it but it's basically that, a lore log that you can access and hear the different stories that you've picked up along the way. At least that's our current iteration at least. We've gone through a lot. I'd have to bring in our interface guy to bring in how many.

I'm really linking the sound of this. It's wonderful to have these things in games, where you can look up facts and figures that are more often than not quite useless from a gameplay perspective. But at the same time it adds more to the game; I know I always spend lots of time pouring over monster stats and lore etc. whenever I play Final Fantasy, Devil May Cry or any other game that has a function like this. And now we'll all be able to do the same in Diablo III. At least when it comes to lore.

This could also be pushed however far Blizzard wanted. It could include monster stats like Diablo 1 did, and theoretically strategies and builds, although that'll probably never happen.

Question 14

Yeah that was a huge problem in D2 where people did Bloody runs or Baal runs over and over.

Leonard Boyarsky: Yeah, we have ideas about how we want to handle those things, specifically it's something we've talked about at length and we have a solution that we think is gonna work really good and keep people from having to continually do the same runs over and over.

This sounds very promising. Any guesses as to what he might mean when he says they have a solution to prevent endless Baal runs?

I'm thinking some form of randomized arena, or perhaps the last levels of the game change setting, monsters and bosses each time you start a new game or something like that? What do you think?

As I was perusing the game files today I came upon some very interesting images. After extracting and piecing them together, I had five images not at all used by the game. They suggested large plans were in the making for D2, but never made it out from the closed doors of the developers. Blizzard has stated they had to cut features from Diablo II due to time constraints, and here we have some hints of what those features might have been that Blizzard had in store for our favorite game.

Guild Icon Background


Called guildiconbckg.dc6, this page seems to show an option for players to select a guild tabard or banner for their guild. The coloring boxes indicate that the banners could have been colored differently by the players.

Sadly, this is just a background, and it appears Blizzard quickly scrapped their plans shortly after making this picture, for only one guild icon was ever finished, or is at least present in the game



It's very dark and not very clear. However looking at the backgrounds I really like most of the pictures. I think had they been implemented they would have worked very well in the Diablo setting. Although a few, like the Pentagram, would probably have been more popular than others

And notice the Cow banner option in the top right corner

Guild Bank


Called guildvault.dc6 in the game, the name leaves little guessing. Apparently plans were to implement a guild bank as well for guilds, something which is very common in many MMO's today.

What could the top area have been used for? Perhaps a log of what people had put in/removed? A message the guild leader could leave for his members?

And as some of you may notice, Blizzard's early philosophy of inventory space is maintained. The storage space is far from spacious, especially when considering that this would be for much more than a single person.

Bank


Simply called bank.dc6, this design seems to suggests that some sort of bank system was to be put into the game. However personally I think it more likely that this was an early design for the personal stash.

Once again, notice the storage space. Spacious to say the least :rolleyes:

Update: Apparently this is how the stash looked at release. I blame ten years for not remembering.

Trophies


trophycase.dc6 is an interesting picture. What exactly would trophies have been used for? Now some of you might be suggesting that this is where the Standard of Heroes is supposed to go, but keep in mind that these images all come from the Classic Diablo II files, and the Standard of Heroes was introduced in Patch 1.11, long after these plans and images had been scrapped.

What would trophies have been then? Perhaps an early version of what we generally call achievements these days? What do you think?

Update: spierce7 has pointed out that all of these Guild features were announced and subsequently dropped by Blizzard before Beta even began. The trophy hall was supposed to have been a guild feature, not a player feature. Read it here

Steegstone


This last picture is very ambiguous. It is simply called steegstonebckg.dc6 in the game, and that doesn't really say anything.

I'm theorizing that this is some form of profile page. The top left appears to be a place for a picture, most likely of the character class. The large box to the left could be for stats and the large to the right for skills and items. The right button also seems to be scrollable, suggesting a lot of info could go in there.

The field with the star indicates some sort of title. Is this where Slayer/Champion etc would have been displayed, or perhaps would a title earned in the aforementioned Trophy system be displayed here?

Update: T'hain Esh Kelch has suggested that this last picture might actually be how the guild chat would have looked. If you look closely, the black box in the left corner is the same size as the guild banner backgrounds shown earlier in this post. It would make sense for guilds to have a guild interface to interact with each other with.

Update 2: spierce7 pointed out that the steeg stone was a feature used to upgrade your guild. By adding gold, players could upgrade their guild to new levels, adding more functionality and features to it. Read it here

Lots of mysteries. Let the speculation begin

Last week there was a small call to arms the other week urging people to get to work on the wiki, and we've had a lot of developments in the wiki during the last week and month.

Purple names. As a few of you have probably picked up by now, there are in addition to blue and red names also purple users on the boards these days. Purple colors are given to forum users who are in addition wiki sysops in the wiki, and the color helps show their status to every forum-visitor in case you have any questions to them, and also to grant them recognition. (Note that forum moderators and admins who also have the sysop position do not get a color change.)

On the article-side of things, we have a few impressive new pages.

New guide. Last week emilemil1 put up the very first version of his Mauler guide, and by now it has grown to become the second largest build in the wiki to date, with detailed equipment lists and statistical breakdowns so you definitely know what the build is capable of. Just head over and take a look at it.

New game mechanic pages. Ferret has written several articles during the last week about Magic Find, Breakpoints and Frames. While I wouldn't say they're done, they are a much needed addition to our wiki when it comes to the more in-depth parts of the Diablo series.

New item pages. Yemen, our very own powerhouse editor, has created many of our missing item pages lately. Here are three out of many pages: Maiden Javelin, Claws and Unique Bows.

New unique item pages. Lethal Weapon has been working with much the same as Yemen, but has focused on creating set item pages and expanding our unique pages to include exceptional and elite weapons as well. Here are two of the pages: Unique Helms and Sazabi's Grand Tribune.

Mods. Lastly, zhuge continues to expand our wiki with mod-related material, mainly in the form of pages about Median XL. For those of you unaware, head over to our wiki page on the topic and see if this mod might be of interest to your D2 gaming experience.

Skills. Lastly, I'd like to draw attention to the new skill page setup we have for the wiki. It's been implemented into several pages already, like Frozen Orb, but there are 180 skills that need to be filled out with this new skill info. We need more people to help out with the wiki, and if you don't know where to start, creating a skill page is a great way to begin.

That's all for this update. I hope we'll continue to see continuous updates in the wiki so I can keep posting updates like this more regularly

The Help section over at the wiki has been rewritten to better show and explain how to edit the new wiki. The previous version of the page was not tailored for our wiki and so lacked a significant amount of information. The page is, I hope, very basic. It will explain how to use templates, create links and categories, but it will not explain how to make templates or wiki code in any depth.

The section can be found here: http://wiki.diablofans.com/index.php/Help:Contents

Perhaps tutorial isn't quite the right word, but with time it will expand. If you ever though of adding something to the wiki but didn't know how to, you might want to take a look at this page. And if you do, come back here and tell us what you liked or disliked about it, and what additions you'd like.


In other news regarding the wiki, we've set up a small fan-fiction section set up. As the fan fiction forum here at Diablofans developes, so will the wiki. In the end it will hopefully be an easily navigated page for all those wishing to find a good diablo read.

In the last week, we've also received three new builds in the wiki: A Werewolf Druid written by Zhar, a Bowzon guide written by someone called Muroidea, and a Frenzy Barbarian guide written by Rousse. I hope all of them will receive future updates, and that we'll get more of the same kind in the future.

A small amount of tidbits, seeing as nothing has been said about the wiki for a long time.

1. The main page of the wiki has been completely overhauled to both look better and be easier to navigate while containing more links to the rest of the wiki. The main page has been tested down to a resolution of 1024x768, and works flawlessly.

If you however happen to be running 800x600, I'm sorry to inform you that you're ten years late and need to get better hardware.

2. The wiki now supports videos (or more precisely embedded videos much like the forums).

3. And as those who have received my PM's know, I've conducted a small wiki-survey here at Diablofans during the last two weeks where I asked active members what they thought of our wiki. The results were as follows:

• 20% do not use our wiki regularly
• 53% uses mainly Arreat Summit however only 23% actually preferred Arreat.
• Only 13% has ever made at least one edit, however as many as 60% said they would like to help out in one way or another. Call me a skeptic, but I doubt that figure. Feel free to call me on this one however, I could always use some help.

• When asked what they would most like to see in the wiki, it's a close call between info about d3, d2, lore and builds/guides.

• Several people said however that the design of the wiki needed to be improved. Which is precisely why the main page has now been redesigned.

4. In april, I reported that we had reached 1,000 articles. One would expect us to be closer to 2,000 by now, when in fact, during the last few months, we've only increased the article count by about a hundred. For those of you who are wondering why this is, the reason is two-fold.

First, most of the previous articles were not added by us here at Diablofans, but were instead copied mainly from Diablo Wikia. This basically had the effect of us becoming a clone of them which wasn't very good. Nothing has been copied from there in a while, and it's something I definately don't think we should do.

Second however, this is also in part because many articles have been combined for better and easier browsing, such as Unique Armor. Instead of 15 pages, we currently have one page with 15 armors on. While this doesn't increase the article count, it probably helps the wiki more by making it easier for you to browse and overlook our info.

5. We've also started to put guides into the wiki. Currently, the prime example is Seth's Energy Shield Lightning Sorceress, but I was hoping other people would like to contribute to this area as well. I've created the Savior for the specific purpose of showing how a guide can be structured, and I'm hoping it'll be of use to some of you.

Those are the wiki updates for now

As I hope you are all aware, in January this year we launched our very own Wiki here as Diablofans. Undaunted by the competition from Diablo Wikia, and determined to provide our users here at Diablofans the best info on Diablo found anywhere, we've since been working to populate our wiki with more and more articles. And a few days ago, we finally got 1,000 articles up and running.

Below you will find some samples of what we have in our wiki so far. Currently, there's is very little information available on Diablo 3, and as a result, most information added so far has been about Diablo 1 and 2.

• Diablo 1 Rogue
• Fire Bolt
• Megademon
• Deeha'Blothri - Our very own forum comic by Atrumentis
• Runes (Diablo II)

I'd also like to take this moment to thank a few of our regular users here at Diablofans for their help over at the wiki since launch. Not all who contribute there are staff or sysops which is important to remember.

• Dauroth
• dunhac82
• Yemen

Your help is really appraciated :thumbsup:

The wiki will continue to expand, and if you want to help out just get over to the Wiki, or go to our Wiki Forums if you have any questions.

After some wait, Blizzcast 8 has finally been revealed to the public!

It is available for download here:

http://eu.blizzard.com/blizzcast/archive/episode8.xml

Discuss what you think about this new Blizzcast which is supposed to be almost exclusively about Diablo 3.

Here are the four new Diablo 3 images that were included with BlizzCast 8 which primarily showcase the inventory system:


I (mockery) particularly like the little details, such as the difference in the stitching around the borders depending on whether you have a bag or a burlap sack selected. The inventory system as a whole looks really sharp if you ask me. What do you think about it?

(Thanks to Lord Petrov.)