Diablo: The Sin War

The Sin War Trilogy is comprised of three novels. This series tells of historical events in the game fiction, and is set 3000 years before events in Diablo I and Diablo II.

• Diablo Novels: Full information on all books in the series.
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The trilogy tells the origins of Sanctuary, and the battles between the High Heavens and the Burning Hells that surround the creation of humanity.

1. Diablo: Birthright
2. Diablo: Scales of the Serpent
3. Diablo: The Veiled Prophet

Diablo: The Sin War is a Diablo novel, and may not be directly related to any of the games, but contains important lore information about the Diablo universe that is canon. SPOILER WARNING! This article contains spoilers about the Diablo universe and Diablo: The Sin War!

Synopsis by Brother Laz

The Sin War summary: the world of Sanctuary was created by an angel named Inarius and a demon named Lilith who were both tired of the Eternal War to serve as their refuge. Inarius wanted humanity to serve him, but because humanity was the spawn of an angel and demon they could be as powerful as both combined. Enter the Worldstone, which served both to keep Sanctuary invisible for the heavens and hells and to subdue humanity's otherworldly powers as nephalem, children of angels and demons.

When the books start, Inarius is at the helm of his own Cathedral of Light as 'the Prophet' and the other important religion is the Triune, led by the Primus (oh yeah, it's Lucion) who serve Mefis, Dialon and Bala, respectively the god of love and other such inversions.

Lilith, who was out of the game for whatever reason I forgot, tried to raise an army by causing some humans - notably farmer Uldyssian - to rediscover their ancient powers. Uldyssian goes prophet, emerges from hometown Seram and assembles a legion of followers - the edyrem - who proceed to attack first the Triune and then the Cathedral. Of course Uldyssian discovers about Lilith and kills her. He also kills his supposed nemesis, Triune priest Malic. Three times. Anyway, Uldyssian's rampage stretches across three books, and by the time they get to the Cathedral they've gone super saiyan and can do anything. They also fight off a Vizjerei in passing.

Inarius proceeds to nearly kill them, but they defeat him anyway. In the meantime, however, heaven and hell have discovered Sanctuary despite the best efforts of the newfound friends of Mendeln, one of Uldyssian's partners. The guy apparently was called by Trag'Oul and his nephalem friend Rathma from the plane of the void, because heaven and hell were moving in to stumble upon Sanctuary and Trag'Oul is the guardian of Sanctuary and wanted to keep them out. Trag'Oul, by the way, looks like a dragon made of stars. I'm not sure how Mendeln was supposed to be useful to them.

Anyway, Uldyssian easily kills Inarius, then the angels and demons invade. The angels were there to destroy this 'taint on creation', the demons to burn it to the ground. Amazingly our edyrem actually stand their ground and kill a lot of angels (!) until Uldyssian goes Akira and explodes. Time freezes and the rest of the party end up in heaven where the Angiris Council decides on the fate of Sanctuary. Malthael and Imperius support pre-emptive destruction, Auriel and Etherael support allowing humanity to develop in case something good comes out of it. The vote is decided by Tyrael, who was a bad guy all along (doing things like reviving Uldyssian's ranger partner Achillios as a zombie to assassinate Uldyssian) but was so moved by Uldyssian's Heroic Sacrifice™ of blowing himself up to keep his out of control powers from blowing up everyone else. (As opposed to the heroic sacrifice of a thousand other red shirt edyrem, I suppose) This taught him that humanity has a heart and should be saved and allowed to exist and eventually 'make their own choice' (read: fight for Heaven, otherwise kaboom).

Angels sign a blood pact with Mephisto to leave Sanctuary alone. (Yeah, he sure kept his side of the deal) Everyone magically forgets the destruction. End of story.

Unsolved threads: Worldstone still exists, humanity goes back to being suckers again and getting owned by demonity.

Reference

• Synopsis by Brother Laz