The Blood Knight is the first new class introduced to the Diablo franchise since the Crusader

This week saw the debut of the Blood Knight, the first new class in the Diablo franchise since the Crusader back in 2014. The Blood Knight is being introduced in Diablo Immortal but there’s no reason to suspect this will be a mobile-only class, as the development team is taking pains to fit their lore in the established canon while also developing a playstyle that is not available in Diablo 4 (yet) and largely absent from the previous entries in the franchise.

Conceived as a hybrid melee/ranged class and modeled after vampires, the Blood Knight wields a polearm as their main weapon while using blood magic to damage and drain the life of their enemies. Their control of blood extends to shields for allies as well as briefly entering a Blood Form to increase movement speed while dealing damage. Their ultimate ability gained at level 50 is Abomination, turning into an unholy abomination with devastating melee attacks for 15 seconds.

The Lore of the Blood Knight in Diablo

The background of the Blood Knight is firmly rooted in “vampire tradition” and those who have played Worgen in World of Warcraft will also notice many similarities between the origin stories. Vampires have been in the franchise since Diablo 2, initially conceived as undead sorcerers with life steal abilities aside standard fireball attacks. Their immortality became a source of fascination for an unnamed lord of the Kehjistan port city of Gea Kul centuries ago, but unfortunately for him an imprisoned vampire escaped and killed the lord.

A hired protector of the lord named Fernam was present during the attack and gravely wounded and thus cursed to become a feral, mindless thrall. A mage under the lord’s employ was able to teach Fernam a ritual that kept the curse at bay, giving him vampiric powers although not immortality nor escape from the possibility of becoming a thrall — a fate all Blood Knights must wrestle with. Fernam thus became the first of his kind, and established a training ground for other Blood Knights in the catacombs beneath the keep.

While Fernam’s fate is currently unknown, the Blood Knights have continued to grow their ranks through finding cursed vampire victims and offering them a chance of salvation or death. They are ultimately concerned with the safety of Sanctuary, but it took an apocalyptic vision during the time of Diablo Immortal before they were willing to emerge as active defenders of it. While their fate — as well as the reasons for their absence during the events of Diablo 3 and Reaper of Souls — are unknown, there are solid reasons to believe that their return to Sanctuary may be sooner rather than later. As already noted there’s a significant reliance on blood magic to drive the story of Diablo 4 forward, and Gea Kul is present and populated in the game. Could the Blood Knight catacombs still be active beneath the city? And if the Prime Evils do return as Lilith believed, the scattered remnants of the Horadrim will need all the help they can get to defeat them and any surviving Blood Knight would be a valuable ally to the cause.