Will We Fight Angels In Diablo III?

by Adam Biessener on Dec 06, 2011 at 04:01 PM

Having made my way through an advance copy of the upcoming Book of Cain, an official Blizzard release that details (the latest version of) the Diablo franchise's lore, I'm left with one question: Will we be taking the fight not just to the Burning Hells, but to the High Heavens as well?

"But Adam," you're thinking. "Aren't the angels on the side of humanity in our struggle against the Prime Evils?" The answer, surprisingly, is "no."

Be warned that what follows here is a serious dive down an intensely nerdy rabbit hole of Diablo lore. Let's put it this way: As research for this article, I just spent three hours reading accounts of major characters and events in the Diablo fiction, written in-character as a personal account by Deckard Cain. Just saying.

The relationship between angels and humans in Diablo is hardly that of shepherds guarding their flock. The forces of the High Heavens didn't even know of humanity's existence, or that of the mortal world Sanctuary, until the Sin War of antiquity. Their contribution to that dire struggle was not to aid humans against the demonic onslaught, but to abstain entirely – only to vote on whether to exterminate humanity afterwards anyway.

Why would they act in such a way? Angels in Diablo are not fat babies with wings and harps, or kindly spirits watching over mortals and trying to guide them toward wisdom and happiness. Diablo's angels are fierce warriors, pure expressions of Hope and Justice and Order and all of the other qualities that demons lack. Unfortunately for humans, Empathy and Kindliness are not on that list.

Not the Necronomicon – the Book of Cain! (click to enlarge)

Humans are important to angels, but not as hash marks on some celestial scoreboard, where the righteous ascend to heaven and the wicked descend to hell in order to prove one philosophy stronger than the other, as in much mythology derived from Judeo-Christian traditions. Quite the opposite, in fact. Humans are important because of the fantastic power trapped within the species (as descendants of an ancient angel-demon union) that both sides of the Eternal Conflict wish to use as a final solution to the war. The Sin War vote demonstrates the angels' commitment to its anti-demon agenda above all else; if they can't have our power, they're more than willing to ensure that the other side can't either.

Diablo's Main Character (Kind Of)
The archangel Tyrael stands at the epicenter of Diablo lore. At the end of the Sin War, thousands of years before the games take place, Tyrael cast the deciding vote that spared humanity from extermination at the hands of the heavenly hosts. He also explicitly helped the heroes during the events of Diablo II, telling them how to destroy the soulstones of Mephisto and Diablo and showing them the way to the extraplanar Pandemonium Fortress. The act that caused him to go full-on renegade from the angelic Angiris Council, however, was when Tyrael used his unimaginable power to destroy the object over which the Eternal Conflict had raged since the beginning of time: the Worldstone. According to the Book of Cain, Tyrael's physical form was disintegrated in the resulting explosion – but rumors of his sword appearing in the world persist, and an archangel of Tyrael's power has never died before, so his ultimate fate remains unknown.

This brings us to Diablo III's timeframe. The Worldstone has been shattered by renegade archangel Tyrael to prevent an uncleansable demonic corruption from turning the artifact irredeemably evil. With the Worldstone gone, though, Sanctuary's protection from the Eternal Conflict is uncertain. For its entire existence, Sanctuary has been largely hidden and shielded from any direct interference by either side. Is the mortal world now doomed to be nothing more than the latest battlefield torn apart by the celestial war?

The most damning piece of information from the Book of Cain comes in the following paragraph:

"Also of great concern is a thought that has plagued me for some time: As we have seen, Tyrael is a noble being who has fought on the behalf of our kind time and time again. Yet I am afraid that he is alone in terms of how his fellow angels view humanity. We have witnessed numerous demons and their lords walk this world, but we have heard little of the High Heavens or of the Angiris Council that rules over them. There is something terribly unsettling about Heaven's silence and the unknown role that angels might play in the coming years."

If you want to get meta about it, the Book of Cain spends a suspicious amount of time talking about the archangels who sit on the Angiris Council and their weapons and fighting styles – just as much as it talks about the Prime Evils. The High Heavens are described in detail, from the Silver City to the Crystal Arch. This could very well be no more than a background information dump, but it could be the foundation for something much more interesting.

I should be clear: This is rank speculation, not anything official from Blizzard. Fighting angels would be a huge departure for the series; the heavenly hosts have only ever been represented by Tyrael himself in the games, and it would be a shocking change in tone from Diablo's Gothic roots to make the clean streets of Heaven run red with celestial blood.

I can't help but think that it would be really, really cool though. And can you imagine the outcry about the inevitable color palette change? The Internet would explode!

[The Book of Cain will be available from your retailer of choice on December 13th for a list price of $35.]