I’ve been thinking:
The forces of good and evil, in the Diablo universe, should be at an equilibrium, right? Otherwise one of the sides would’ve overcome the other. Instead they are at a constant war, which means they are equal.
But then there is Izual - a corrupted angel. If the demons can corrupt angels, wouldn’t that tilt the scales into the evil’s favor?
Perhaps that is the reason why we see the angels always being on the defending side, and not on the offensive (at least in D2 and D3. I haven’t played D1, and I haven’t read any of the books).
But if angels can “fall” and start fighting for the demons, shouldn’t have the high heavens lost the battle?
Or perhaps they had an initial advantage, but slowly lost it by getting some of them corrupted?
Or can demons “rise” like angels can “fall” to keep the equilibrium?
Rathma, whose birth name was Linarian, is a first-generation nephalem and tutor to the first Necromancer of his namesake’s order, the Priests of Rathma. Rathma’s parents were the ringleaders of Sanctuary’s creation, Lilith and Inarius; he balked against their different yet equally domineering ways from an early age.
Rathma was a key participant in the Sin War, acting in the shadows alongside the mystical being Trag’Oul to sabotage both his parent’s causes and preserve the Balance by ensuring that neither his parents nor their respective races could dominate the future of the world. Subsequently, he was one of the few residents of Sanctuary able to recall the events of the war, which was assumed to be an allowance for the original nephalem due to their highly advanced ages by that time. He then established the Priests of Rathma along with founding necromancer, ensuring the Balance would forevermore have its protectors even if the world could not remember the events that nearly destroyed it.
"Finally, we come to Rathma, a brooding, solitary being who sought out the deep recesses of the world. He studied the cycle of life and death and taught it to those willing to venture into his subterranean habitat. Rathma is the patron of the necromancers, and he values the Balance of light and dark above all things."
Yet a question remains.
Angels and demons are immortal. If one is killed, s/he will just respawn. Yet, as we see from Izual, if once corrupted, an angel will respawn corrupted.
So, assuming Izual is not an isolated case (and why would he be?), does that mean necromancers’ efforts to keep the balance must’ve been shifting more and more towards the side of the high heavens?
The balance is way off, look at D4. The 7 evils are now lose and crazy Mother has returned, the high heavens have also close it’s gates. What are we to do? I hope we go to the burning hell’s to free Father, I want to see him kick some demon booty.
According to D3 the evils can generally overpower the angels, however, whenever the evils are at the door to heaven they turn on themselves to see which one claims glory.
It would be better to say the forces of evil are stronger than the forces of good, but good remains united in the face of evil so when evil fights amongst itself it loses the advantage it had and is beaten back.
Regarding Izual, I’m pretty sure his corruption was his own doing (similar to tyreals) in the sense that Izual acknowledges that he betrayed the heavens in D2 by providing the soul stones to the evils, although I don’t think I’ve heard the reasons why (he might have wanted to destroy sanctuary, but since the angels stopped any involvement, he then turned to the evils to do the job instead).
I doubt that many angels are corrupted in such a permanent manner, since Tyreals fall required a certain level of conflict between the angels and they are often united against the evils.
You have the forces of Sanctuary fighting to keep the balance which include Rathma, the necromancers and pretty much all the powerful guilds and groups that are made up of humans, ancients, and nephalem. There is also Trag’oul, a dragon from another plane of existence that helps protect the balance, because if Sanctuary falls, the heavens and hell’s may be able to get to other realities. So our little rock has plenty going for it to help keep one side from getting too powerful.
Something that I think is worth mentioning is that while Rathma and his followers, the necromancers, along with a number of other things within Sanctuary helped to maintain the balance between Heaven and Hell; they had not always existed. In fact, I’m of the belief the entire time span of Sanctuary’s existence merely makes up a speck of the grand total duration that the Eternal Conflict was waged. This means that if Hell wanted to corrupt Heaven’s forces, then they had plenty of time to make use of such a stratagem. So the question becomes:
Why didn’t Hell choose to corrupt Heaven and bring an end to the Eternal Conflict?
I can think of a few reasons as to why (these reasons are of course, merely speculations):
Quick note: A few of these reasons may or mayn’t correlate with one another:
Hell wasn’t united on the idea of corrupting their foes:
There’s always the possibility that while the Lords of Hell had played with the idea of corrupting their eternal foes; only a few of them were actually for it; while the rest of the demon lords just wanted to destroy the angels.
We’ve actually seen a bit of this on the Angels end as well. After battling Diablo and successfully subduing him, they had the perfect chance at sealing Diablo and in turn change the flow of the Eternal Conflict greatly in Heaven’s favor. However, Imperius wanted nothing more than to slay Diablo, despite the former option giving Heaven a better chance at victory in the Eternal Conflict.
Hell didn’t have much opportunities to corrupt their foes:
With the exception of being on the battlefield, Hell perhaps had few too little chances at capturing Angels. Even when Heaven’s forces successfully entered Hell, they’re usually driven off or slain before Hell’s forces could capture them. An example of such an occurrence was when angels had attacked Mephisto within his lair, but they were driven off by the Magma Demons that were born from Mephisto’s spilt blood. Angels being within Hell itself could’ve been almost as rare as an opportunity as Demons being at the Heaven’s Diamond Gates. Izual thus far, is the only known angel to be captured within Hell, during his ill-advised assault in the effort to stop the creation of the Shadowfang blade.
Corrupting Angels could be a long and/or difficult process
Based on the events that transpired with Izual, it seems that his corruption process involved breaking his body, mind, and spirit; a process in which the prime evils, Baal, Mephisto, and Diablo all took part in doing. After doing so, and learning whatever confidential secrets regarding Heaven and the Soulstones that Izual knew of, the prime evils then bound his soul/essence into a demonic vessel/husk. Of course, that isn’t to say that every angel needs a demonic vessel in order to be corrupted, but I believe that this would be the ideal method for corrupting powerful angels and archangels.
To add further to this point, I’d like to point out that during Diablo’s invasion in the High Heavens itself; neither Imperius, who actually fought Diablo and suffered both defeat and grievous injuries, Auriel, who was imprisoned and placed under Rakanoth’s watch, nor Itherael suffered any form of corruption (at least none that we were made aware of), whereas there were a number of lesser angels who were corrupted from the demons onslaught.
Hell probably would rather corrupt Angels en mass rather than individually
While invading Heaven, it became clear that Diablo’s intent was the corruption of the Crystal Arch, the lynchpin of the High Heavens itself. We saw during the events of Diablo 3 act 4 that Diablo’s initial attempt at corrupting the Crystal Arch had rendered probably every angel (except Tyrael) completely powerless. If he had succeeded in corrupting the Crystal Arch, then the High Heavens and all those connected to it would’ve either faced corruption and thus fated to become a permanent outpost of Hell and/or complete annihilation.
Anyway those are my own guesses as to why Hell hadn’t attempted to just corrupt their angelic foes and thus claim victory in the Eternal Conflict. Perhaps
Diablo 4 can shed more light upon that reasoning, since Lilith is set to return. Of course, if Heaven doesn’t make any kind of re-appearance, then we more than likely won’t learn anything new regarding demon corrupting angels and/or possibly even angels purifying demons. That said, I know that Heaven’s gates are currently closed; but will they remain so for the entire game? It certainly will be interesting to see.
Tbh, I’m not sure. However, considering Inarius’s high standing within the High Heavens as well as the fact that he was an Archangel, I’d like to think that he did at some point similar to how Izual had the Azurewrath.
Narrator: They been winging it from the very beginning and every rendition since. The game comes first then they create some story to fill in the gaps, and try to link it with the half assed story/lore from the previous titles who did the same thing.
The books and such try to make sense of the games.
I’m sure the demons who joined with Lilith and Inarius were good, or at least as good as demons could be. I am personally hoping to see, in Diablo 4, demons of a wide variety of personalities. Some of whom, could even be helpful (to an extent) to humans.
Why did we never free that giant demon that was chained. The one that was in torment as we were running down the stairs. He looked like he could have done some damage. The only one that helps us is that demon slave with the fire chain on the weapon. I give that weapon Maximus to my follower so she can have a friend.
Are you talking about the flayed ones from act 3 in Azmodan’s area? If so, then I’d hate to say it, but the amount of pain and torture that they went through probably couldn’t be alleviated through any way except for death.
Well, to begin with, any war that is fought over thousands of years at a stalemate is
stupid
extremely unrealistic. It’s statistically improbable that people are THAT much equal that none of the side wins.
Seeing just how many angels and demons die just as you casually run by some of the locations, one gotta wonder just how many babies each side is having every day.
But OK, let’s say they are equal. The corrupted angel thing can be easily explained by similar abnormalities happening on the other side. Demons like Lilith betraying the demonkind, Demons getting randomly slaughtered by sone heroes that have popped out of nowhere and their generals getting imprisoned in stones.
Just because one side has had an oopsie (Izual), doesn’t mean the other side doesn’t have its own problems.
This is, however, an EXTREME stretch to suggest that such events happen equally to both sides to the point of none managing to gain any ground for thousands of years.
You honestly shouldn’t think too hard on it though. Blizzard storytelling is very basic, and a lot of things don’t make sense. They just give you some dogmas about how the world is, and don’t expect anyone to think too deeply of how it all actually works for any length of time without falling apart.
For example, seeing as Angels and Demons are sapient beings, I can’t help but question how on earth they manage to stay so single-minded. Why aren’t their factions of Angels that do not accept the Anduris Counsil and do things their own way. Angels are shown to possess free will after all, so it’s extremely hard to imagine they stay 100% subordinate and as a unified front.
Yeah, we’re told about some angels that went away and created Sanctuary, but how come there are not more of these factions?
One explanation would be hivemind/brainwashing, but Blizzard never gives such explanations.
I actually like Belial the most, because unlike other demons who want to kill humans for lulz or seek mindless destruction, he actually enjoying playing “emperor” and living in the grand luxury castle until we came to kick him out from the palace. He even made his followers to disguise as “royal guard”, to the point, you think he wants to be “human” to lead those weak humans. He doesn’t even want to corrupt or turned those helpless civilians into demon like Mephisto did either.
Also, he also has the coolest boss battle where he turned the entire arena to his dimension. If you don’t know better, you will think he is the final boss. He even has the 1st weak form to fight you like every final boss in many JRPG/ARPG/Action /Castlevania game.
Yeah, when I first played Diablo 3 and fought Belial, I was seriously astounded by his transformation as well as how it caused parts of the structures to break apart. I definitely died to him a few times. Honestly gameplay wise, I would have to say Belial was one of Diablo 3’s most impressive bosses.
