A history of Sanctuary
Follow the choices that carried Sanctuary from a refuge outside the Eternal Conflict to the Age of Hatred.
Age
Long before Sanctuary existed, the High Heavens and Burning Hells fought across countless ages for control of the Worldstone.
After Anu cast out its own evil, that shadow became the seven-headed dragon Tathamet. Their mutual destruction formed the High Heavens, the Burning Hells, and the Worldstone that would shape every realm to follow.
This established the origins of Heaven, Hell, and the seven Great Evils.
The Crystal Arch gave rise to angels while Tathamet's remains spawned demons. Each inherited the conflict of creation and regarded the other as an enemy to be erased, making the Eternal Conflict the cosmos's oldest order.
Every later faction and mortal destiny would be pulled into this war.
The Worldstone could shape reality. Heaven and Hell fought over it across the Pandemonium and built the Pandemonium Fortress around it. Both fortress and stone changed hands, but neither side secured a final victory.
The endless stalemate drove some angels and demons to seek escape.
Captured and tortured during the conflict, Inarius lost faith in the Eternal Conflict. He came to believe both Heaven and Hell were imprisoned by war and that freedom could exist only beyond them.
His desire to escape became the immediate motive for creating Sanctuary.
Lilith, daughter of Mephisto, also tired of war. She freed Inarius and gathered renegades from both sides. Their shared escape grew into a plan for a world beyond the rule of Heaven and Hell.
For the first time, enemies united for the purpose of leaving the war.
Inarius, Lilith, and their followers took the Worldstone from the Pandemonium and used it to hide the path to a new world. Its disappearance deprived the Eternal Conflict of its greatest prize.
Sanctuary could now be created and hidden from both Heaven and Hell.
Age
Angels and demons weary of war stole the Worldstone, hid a new world, and gave rise to the first nephalem.
The renegades shaped Sanctuary through the Worldstone and hid it from Heaven and Hell. Conceived as a refuge from war, it soon produced life whose potential exceeded anything its creators expected.
Human history and a third possibility beyond Heaven and Hell began here.
The children of angels and demons became the nephalem, inheriting both natures and potentially surpassing their parents. Rathma stood among the firstborn and witnessed the conflict between Lilith and Inarius.
Nephalem power caused the creators' first split over humanity's survival.
Some renegades feared the nephalem and argued that their children must be destroyed. Convinced humanity could end the Eternal Conflict, Lilith slaughtered the other renegades to protect them.
Inarius refused to kill Lilith but banished her to the Void.
Unable to accept Lilith's slaughter yet unwilling to kill her, Inarius cast her into the Void. He then ruled Sanctuary alone, placing himself above the world as both creator and master.
Without a rival, Inarius began reshaping humanity's power.
Inarius altered the Worldstone so nephalem power diminished with each generation. The mighty firstborn passed into legend, while their descendants became mortal humans who forgot their origin.
Human civilization grew while losing the memory of its own potential.
Rathma rejected both parents' extremes and learned from the dragon Trag'Oul to preserve the Balance between life and death, order and chaos. His followers became the Priests of Rathma, later known as necromancers.
A mortal tradition loyal to neither Heaven nor Hell was established.
Age
Lilith, Inarius, Heaven, and Hell fought over humanity's potential until Uldyssian won Sanctuary a fragile reprieve.
The Prime Evils influenced humanity through the Triune while Inarius founded the Cathedral of Light as its Prophet. Mortals saw rival faiths, but both were instruments competing for Sanctuary and human potential.
A hidden proxy war drew ordinary humans into the struggle between Heaven and Hell.
Lilith escaped the Void and awakened the suppressed nephalem power of the farmer Uldyssian. She intended to use him and his followers to destroy both faiths and turn humanity into her army.
Humanity rediscovered its hidden power on a large scale for the first time.
Uldyssian gradually saw through Lilith's manipulation and led the awakened Edyrem against both the Triune and Cathedral. They rejected Heaven, Hell, and Sanctuary's creators as masters of humanity's future.
The proxy conflict became a human struggle for self-determination.
The Edyrem's power and the collapse of the cults exposed Sanctuary. The High Heavens saw humanity as an abomination born of angels and demons, while Hell saw a new army to exploit.
Sanctuary faced its first open three-sided war among Heaven, Hell, and humanity.
Uldyssian unleashed his power against the invaders, then realized it threatened the world itself. He sacrificed himself, returned that power to Sanctuary, and undid much of Inarius's suppression of the Worldstone.
Human potential reopened, even as memory of the event was sealed away.
The Angiris Council voted on humanity's extermination. Moved by Uldyssian's sacrifice, Tyrael cast the deciding vote for survival. Heaven and Hell agreed to withdraw, and most mortal memories of the war were erased.
Humanity survived, and Tyrael began his long transformation into its ally.
Age
The ambitions of mage clans invited disaster, and Tyrael formed the Horadrim to bind the Prime Evils in soulstones.
The four Lesser Evils rebelled and cast Diablo, Mephisto, and Baal out of Hell. The brothers entered Sanctuary, spreading terror, hatred, and destruction while manipulating humanity from the shadows.
The war between Heaven and Hell once again fell directly upon the mortal world.
Tyrael secretly gathered heroes from rival mage clans, formed the Horadrim, and entrusted them with soulstones. The mortal order was charged with hunting and imprisoning the three Prime Evils.
The Horadrim became the intellectual foundation for later resistance to demonic invasions.
The Horadrim caught Mephisto in Kehjistan and sealed him beneath the Zakarum holy site that became Travincal. Over the centuries, the Lord of Hatred slowly corrupted the very order assigned to guard him.
The corruption of Zakarum planted the roots of the later catastrophe in Kurast.
Baal's soulstone was damaged during his capture. Horadric leader Tal Rasha offered his own body to complete the prison and was chained beneath the desert to battle the Lord of Destruction for centuries.
Baal's prison depended on mortal will from the beginning and would eventually fail.
Jered Cain led the Horadrim in capturing Diablo. They buried the soulstone in Khanduras and built a monastery above it. As the order faded, both the prison and its purpose passed out of memory.
The monastery became Tristram Cathedral and the center of the first game's catastrophe.
After the Prime Evils were bound, the Horadrim lost their shared purpose and faded. Rival mage clans fought over forbidden magic, while ordinary people forgot the dangers sleeping beneath their world.
The loss of knowledge allowed Diablo to undermine his prison from within Tristram.
Age
The seal beneath Tristram failed. A hero defeated Diablo below the cathedral, only to carry a new catastrophe onto the road.
From within the soulstone, Diablo corrupted Archbishop Lazarus and drew the royal family beneath the cathedral. King Leoric resisted possession and went mad, while young Albrecht became the Lord of Terror's new vessel.
The kingdom of Tristram collapsed and the cathedral became a gate for Hell's influence.
Heroes descended through cathedral, catacombs, and infernal depths, uncovering the fates of Leoric, Lazarus, and the missing prince. Deckard Cain recognized the return described in Horadric warnings.
Forgotten Horadric knowledge again became essential to opposing the Lord of Terror.
The hero defeated Diablo in the cathedral's deepest chamber. The demon's form collapsed into Albrecht's body and the soulstone, but the victor mistakenly believed mortal will could contain Terror forever.
A decision made in apparent victory directly created the Dark Wanderer.
Prince Aidan drove Diablo's soulstone into his own brow, hoping to imprison the demon through force of will. Diablo instead consumed him from within and turned the hero into the Dark Wanderer heading east.
The Lord of Terror gained a mobile human vessel and began seeking his brothers.
After the Dark Wanderer departed, Diablo's influence consumed Tristram. Demons slaughtered its people and imprisoned Deckard Cain, while the first heroes were each twisted into later tragedies.
A new band of heroes inherited the pursuit from the ruins.
Accompanied by Marius, the Dark Wanderer crossed monastery and desert, leaving corruption and demons behind. Diablo's true purpose was to free Baal and reunite with Mephisto in Kurast.
The local tragedy of the first game expanded into a crisis across Sanctuary.
Age
The Dark Wanderer freed the Prime Evils. Heroes pursued them across Sanctuary and witnessed the corruption and destruction of the Worldstone.
The Dark Wanderer reached Tal Rasha's tomb, where a vision deceived Marius into removing the soulstone shard. Baal escaped centuries of imprisonment and left the shard with Marius as the key to restoring his power.
Only Mephisto's prison in Kurast still stood between the Prime Evils and reunion.
Mephisto had already corrupted Zakarum's leadership from beneath Travincal. When Diablo and Baal arrived, the brothers reunited. Diablo fully assumed his demonic form and passed through a gate into Hell.
The heroes now had to destroy the Evils and their soulstones instead of trusting another prison.
The heroes defeated Mephisto in the Durance of Hate and Diablo in the Chaos Sanctuary, then shattered both soulstones at the Hellforge. Cain and Tyrael hoped this would delay their return.
Baal alone remained active, and he turned toward the Worldstone.
Baal reclaimed his soulstone shard from Marius and marched on Mount Arreat, where the Worldstone was guarded. Through deception and destruction, he broke the barbarian defenses and entered the Worldstone Chamber.
For the first time, a Prime Evil directly corrupted the Worldstone.
The heroes crossed Mount Arreat and the Ancients' trial to defeat Baal in the Worldstone Chamber. But the Lord of Destruction had completed the corruption, and the artifact continued spreading demonic influence through Sanctuary.
Victory could not save the artifact, leaving Tyrael only the choice to destroy it.
Tyrael judged the Worldstone beyond cleansing and cast El'druin into it. The explosion destroyed Mount Arreat and removed the force that had long hidden and constrained Sanctuary.
Both human potential and external threats lost their barrier, setting the stage for the third age.
Age
Nephalem power awakened again. Diablo invaded Heaven as the Prime Evil, before the Angel of Death drove humanity toward extinction.
When Heaven refused to aid humanity, Tyrael surrendered his angelic nature and fell into New Tristram Cathedral. As a mortal, he warned Sanctuary that the Black Soulstone and demonic armies were bringing a new crisis.
Tyrael completed his transformation from Heaven's enforcer into humanity's ally.
Maghda and the Coven attacked Cain, Leah, and Tyrael. Mortally wounded, Cain still restored the stranger's sword and entrusted others with protecting Leah and understanding the prophecy.
The scholar linking three ages died, passing responsibility for memory to a new Horadrim.
Zoltun Kulle's Black Soulstone could contain every Evil. After Belial and Azmodan fell, the heroes bound them together with the lingering essences of the other five demon lords.
All Hell's rulers were concentrated in one vessel, making the Prime Evil possible.
Adria revealed her loyalty to Diablo and used Leah's bloodline with the Black Soulstone to restore him. Diablo absorbed the other six Evils and invaded the High Heavens as the Prime Evil.
Heaven faced the first direct invasion by the united power of Hell.
The awakened nephalem crossed the corrupted High Heavens and defeated Diablo before the Crystal Arch. The Black Soulstone fell back to Sanctuary, saving Heaven but leaving all seven Evils bound together.
The Black Soulstone became the ultimate temptation for anyone seeking power over death and souls.
Malthael, former Archangel of Wisdom, became Death, seized the Black Soulstone, and judged humanity a demonic contamination. His Reaping killed on a vast scale before the nephalem defeated him.
The soulstone shattered, freeing the Evils while Sanctuary's population and institutions collapsed.
Age
Fifty years later, a broken Sanctuary faced Lilith's return while Mephisto used mortal choices to carry Hatred into a new age.
Roughly fifty years after Malthael's catastrophe, Elias summoned Lilith from the Void through a blood ritual. She exploited fear and desire in a broken society, promising to harden humanity against Hell's coming invasion.
Sanctuary's creator returned to history, again treating humanity as the instrument of her plan.
Convinced prophecy would secure his return to Heaven, Inarius demanded the key to Hell from his son Rathma. When Rathma refused, his father killed him, advancing the prophecy in a way Inarius never understood.
The oldest nephalem fell, exposing the blindness behind Inarius's obsession with prophecy.
Inarius led the Cathedral into Hell and struck Lilith, but pride left him vulnerable and she killed him. The Wanderer then stopped Lilith from consuming Mephisto's power and defeated her in the realm of Hatred.
Both creators left the board, and Mephisto emerged as the true inheritor of the crisis.
Neyrelle abandoned the plan to imprison Lilith and instead bound Mephisto in the soulstone before leaving alone. Mephisto followed in wolf form, turning her independent choice into a new road for Hatred.
The story shifted from the war with Lilith to Mephisto's corruption of Neyrelle and Sanctuary.
Neyrelle traveled to Nahantu seeking a way to cleanse the soulstone, but Mephisto's influence consumed both her and the land along the way. The Wanderer followed through the legacy of the Spiritborn and Akarat to resist Hatred's spread.
Mephisto evolved from an imprisoned threat into the dominant power acting through faith and flesh.
Mephisto's power spread from Nahantu toward Skovos, twisting faith and rule through Hatred. The Wanderer joined old friends and new allies in pursuing the Prime Evil as Sanctuary entered a new reckoning centered on Hatred.
At the current end of the released campaign, Sanctuary still faces the unresolved cycle of the Prime Evils' return.
Character index
Use the chronicle navigation to trace any of these lives through the timeline.
Daughter of Hatred and co-creator of Sanctuary, determined to shape humanity in the name of its survival.
The angel who fled the Eternal Conflict and co-created Sanctuary, forever seeking a return to Heaven.
Firstborn of Lilith and Inarius, guardian of the Balance and founder of the necromantic tradition.
Lord of Terror, master of turning mortal fear, doubt, and sacrifice into paths for his return.
Lord of Hatred, whose patient corruption turns enemies and allies alike into pieces of his designs.
Lord of Destruction, whose corruption of the Worldstone permanently changed Sanctuary.
From Archangel of Justice to mortal guardian, he repeatedly trusted humanity to choose its own fate.
One of the last Horadric scholars, linking the first three crises through memory, warning, and knowledge.
Cain's adopted niece, driven by deception and bloodline into becoming the vessel of the Prime Evil.
A key member of the reborn Horadrim who kept recording and pursuing Sanctuary's threats after the order fractured.
Editorial record
Official games, manuals, books, and Blizzard publications take precedence. Community timelines corroborate sequence only and never override explicit canon.