The Queue: Return of the Blood Octopus

Hi, guys. So my right retina had a busted blood vessel this week, which means that I have this cloud of blood inside my eye that is blocking what little my right eye can normally see behind what looks like a gigantic black octopus that slowly disintegrates into a strange constellation of blood dots.

Because of the way brains work, mine is stuck trying to use the input from my right and left eyes and as a result it’s like I’m having visual hallucinations of tentacles of blackness floating around superimposed over everything.

What I’m saying is, I didn’t really need to be this prepared for Midnight. 

Man, they’ll really go to any lengths to avoid making Half-Life 3, won’t they?

Okay, here goes.

Angels and Demons in Diablo are essentially fragmented entities rising from the last remains of the Diamond Warrior Anu and the demonic dragon Tathemet. These two titanic entities were the result of the primordial Anu deciding to perfect itself by removing all evil from it’s being, which caused the split that created the two opposite entities of good and evil.

When Anu and Tathemet met in battle, both were destroyed. This destruction left behind relics — the corpse of Tathemet collapsed a realm around itself as it died which would become known as the Burning Hells, and the dragon’s seven heads took on a new existence as the seven Evils.

Meanwhile, the spine of Diamond Warrior Anu became the Crystal Arc that we see in Diablo 3. The radiance and resonance of the Arc gave rise to the Angels, who organized themselves around the most powerful of their kind, the Archangels.

Tyrael’s mortal form is not human, although it appears as such. Humans in the Diablo setting are descended from the Nephelem, who themselves were the offspring of Angels and Demons who came together to escape the Eternal Conflict, a cosmic war between the denizens of Heaven and Hell. It’s essentially like a cosmic echo of the clash between Diamond Warrior Anu and Tathemet.

We actually don’t know why or how Tyrael’s decision to reject the Angiris Council — the Archangels that essentially control and direct their ‘society’ so to speak — led to him becoming a mortal being. But we do know that when Malthael attacked in an attempt to grab the Black Soulstone, he didn’t kill Tyrael because when he looked at Tyrael’s soul he could see there was no demonic essence within it. All humans in Diablo have both angelic and demonic essence in their souls, whereas demons lack the angelic and angels lack the demonic.

Now, we know that Angels can fall to becoming Demons — Izual, for example — but we also know that according to Archangel Itherael that Izual’s replacement did not arise from the Crystal Arch and that’s how they knew he wasn’t actually dead as Tyrael had reported. This is interesting because it’s a primary difference between what happens when you kill an Angel vs. a Demon.

When an Angel dies their essence can return to the Crystal Arch, but it doesn’t come back as the same Angel — a new one will be born instead, one that is the embodiment of the same primordial aspect of existence as the Angel was. So when Izual ‘died’ in Diablo 2, what should have happened was that the Crystal Arch should have reabsorbed and resonated that angelic essence into a new Angel. The fact that it didn’t told them that the Angel Izual was not dead, and furthermor, it implies that even a corrupted Angel remains an Angel — it does not become a Demon even when it looks like one and fights on the side of the Hells.

It’s unknown if Demons can do what Tyrael did, reject their immortal natures and become mortal beings, and it’s very unlikely they would want to forfeit effective immortality and the ability to return from death.

Tyrael in mortal form is still a powerful being and he still commands El’druin, which is a literal manifestation of Justice itself, but he is a mortal and as such he gets tired, hungry, and is heir to all the suffering that being a temporary blob of gristle and blood gifts us with. And he also lacks the power of the Nephalem which is every human’s potential birthright.

I hope this answers your questions because it’s already a novel.

I’m looking at the calendar now and why did you have to remind me of time’s inexorable passage like that? I’m old, have pity on me.

He’s not wrong, folks. I’ve been hyping it on the podcast and so has Joe and you should seriously check it out.

Okay, so that’s the Queue for today. Thanks to f#rdinan for the Diablo question, and thanks to Kalcheus for giving me the perfect setup for a joke about Valve torturing gamers for decades with the concept of Half-Life 3.