The Queue: The Nuance

Here I am, playing Season 3 of Diablo 4 and I’m still learning new things about the story and lore of the franchise. In one throwaway conversation with Taissa you can ask her about Andariel, and she drops that little bomb.

Why is it important? Because it goes to motive, and that’s the one thing we’ve never really had when dealing with the Seven Evils. Why are Duriel and Andariel all about suffering? Why is Belial the lord of lies, why does Azmodan rule over sin itself? And why are the three Greater Evils embodiments of Hate, Fear and Destruction?

Because the primordial Anu ripped half of itself, the half it saw as horrific and disgusting, and threw it away. Of course they are ruled by Hate, Fear and Destruction — they were destroyed, they hate the entity that did it and the progeny sired by it, and of course they know fear far more intimately because they remember the fear of being abandoned in the dark.

They deal in lies because they tell themselves the lie every day that they are powerful, that they are the ones who inflict pain and anguish, because it has to be remembered that at the dawn of the universe a being that was everything decided to only keep half of itself and threw the rest away. Anu’s self loathing created Evil, in the cosmology of the Diablo series, and Evil is a traumatized mass of emotional chaos at having been abandoned so thoroughly.

Once, Andariel and the others were part of something greater. Then they were cast aside. They rule over pain and fear and sin and lies and hate and destruction because they have felt all of these things at the dawn of their own creation.

Up until last week I was basically playing the following games as the mood struck me:

• Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty
• Baldur’s Gate 3
• Diablo 4
• Diablo 3
• Godfall (look, sue me, I enjoy how shiny and pretty it is)

However, for the past week I’ve been all Diablo 4 all the time. I’m considering picking up Last Epoch but to be honest the money really isn’t there.

But I already own Diablo 4 and so I might as well play it, and I’m actually really loving what I get out of replaying the shockingly engaging and deep story campaign for the base game. I’m about to hit level 50 on the second Season character I created and I haven’t even started Hawezar yet.

This is an essay I wrote about the CIA. It’s basically my one stop shop for weird conspiracy theories about that organization.

I wrote a few weird essays like that back in the day, because unlike modern conspiracy theorists I know that ideas are fun but the universe isn’t compelled to change just because I have them.

I have the game on GOG thanks to a lovely friend who bought it for me (way back when it first went into early access) and so, I guess I picked a good week to obsess over Diablo 4 again.

I do miss my murder buddy though. Playing a Barb, you’d think I wouldn’t bring Karlach everywhere, but having two Barbs, a healer, and either Gale or Asterian depending on my mood (so usually Gale) leads to a lot of dead things. At one point I had Gale cast Enlarge on me, Haste on Karlach, and then he just case Fire Arrow over and over again because holy carp.

And hey, Jalamenos and I are both Dark Urge players! Dark Urge is the best, y’all. Just constant barely contained homicidal thoughts being the intrusive worst.

Couldn’t I use a soda that doesn’t taste awful and wasn’t originally created by the Nazis as an alternative to other, better sodas that they couldn’t get the ingredients for due to that whole trying to conquer the world thing?

I demand continuous updates on the Pirate situation until they are found.

Okay, that’s the Queue for today. Maybe it was a little weird, but heck, I got to talk a lot about Diablo 4 so I’m happy.