Ort+Sol Reaper of Souls: What we Know so Far

by Whitney "Neinball" Fairchild - 11 years ago     show comments

First off, I think I did rather well in my speculation series on RoS. While no mention of the Worldstone and Malthael brushing off Tyrael kept me from batting 100% I still nailed it on many of the other points. I also decided on a name for my lore articles, Ort+Sol. If you’re a Diablo II veteran you should get the joke, if can’t recall what it means think about it for a second. For those of you who don’t get it, Ort+Sol is the rune combination for Lore, catchy huh? Anyways, lets just hop into that cinematic.

So many nerd chills. This short cinematic answers some of the questions we had from the end of Diablo III as well as some of the speculation into the plot of RoS.

Malthael

The first take away is of course the big bad, we now know that Malthael is going to be the main antagonist of the expansion. He’s completely abandoned the mantle of Wisdom and taken on the shroud of Death with an agenda that puts all of Sanctuary at risk. In the expansion presentation and the following dev interviews it’s been stated that Malthael is on a quest to end the Eternal Conflict once and for all. What we don’t know is how ending all life on Sanctuary and the Black Soulstone play into that. He seems to only care about consuming the souls of human as he tosses Tyrael to the side after sampling part of his soul.

Notice how carefully studies that wisp before casting him aside while he freely consumed the souls of the Horadrim? While this killed my speculation that Malthael would be out for vengeance against Tyrael it does start a new train of thought, especially when we consider the focus of his actions in the trailer.

The Black Soulstone

The Black Soulstone was central to the plot of Diablo III so it shouldn’t come as much of surprise that it’s still important in the expansion. The trailer tied up one of the biggest loose ends and one of my biggest issues with the ending of the original game. Why the hell did they throw Diablo’s corpse off the side of the Crystal Arch and just let one of the most deadly artifacts in Creation be lost?

We now see that it fell into the center of the Angiris Council and wasn’t just discarded. The Council didn’t see to be having an easy time figuring out what to do with it given Tyrael’s narration and ultimately he decided to steal it away to Sanctuary. The Black Soulstone still contains the souls of all of the Seven Evils and we can hear their whispers at certain parts in the trailer. It’s very hard to make out and I’d love to hear some of your interpretations of the whisperings of the stone. In the midst of locking the stone away they were ambushed by Malthael. The stone is somehow central to his plans to eradicate life from Sanctuary and ending the battle with the forces of Hell.

This is where I point out that Tyreal really hasn’t had the best of luck with hiding Soulstones in Sanctuary.

The Horadrim

The Order of the Horadrim were a group of powerful mages assembled by Tyrael to combat the three Prime Evils when they were exiled to Sanctuary by the Lesser Evils. These hand picked mages were the best of the best and charged with one single task, hunt down the Evils and lock them within the powerful Soulstones. After beating the Three the Horadrim locked away the Soulstones and with their mission fulfilled the order fell into obscurity until many years later only a single descendant of the order remained, Deckard Cain. With Cain’s passing the last of the original Order were gone, but now it seems we have a new Order to take it’s place in guarding Sanctuary.

In the events of the book The Order we learn that a new group of self proclaimed Horadrim were founded in Kehjistan. Unlike the original group this new Horadrim were not mages but simply historic scholars who idolized the Horadrim and were duped by the forces of Hell into unwittingly playing a part in a major threat to the safety of Sanctuary. This new Order that was alongside Tyrael in the trailer is more then likely not the same group in the book. These Horadrim seemed to be at least be ready for combat, a far cry from those in the book. This does make me wonder how much time has passed since the events of the original Diablo III. How many are in the new Order and where did Tyrael find them all? I bet this will be answered in the upcoming Book of Tyreal that will chronicle the events of Tyrael’s journey throughout all of Sanctuary during a period of self imposed exile following the events of Diablo III.

Westmarch and Pandemonium

We’ll get to see much of Westmarch, capital of the Western Kingdoms, in the expansion and it’s hinted at that we’ll eventually be taken to the Pandemonium Fortress at some point in Act V. Westmarch has a lot of history in the Diablo lore and is home of the Templars. I wonder if we’ll get to see more of Kormac’s story and delve into the secrets of the Templars, with Malthael waging war on humanity it seems their fears were well founded.

Since the beginning of Act V is going to take place in Westmarch it means Pandemonium will come into play towards the end. Will the secrets behind Malthael’s motivations and plans be held within the Fortress’ walls? Could we end up seeing the Worldstone after all?

The Minions

One of the other big questions was what exactly were we going to fight? If Malthael was going to be bringing death to everyone, who was going to allied with him? The devs have clarified that when Malthael went missing from Heaven his followers, the Angels of Widsom, went in search after him… And were never heard from again. Now we see who Malthael’s support team is. He’s turned his followers into Harbingers of Death to further his agenda in Sanctuary. There’s also the undead. Lots of undead. Heaping mounds of undead. Every single corpse you come across in the world has the potential to be risen as a minion of Malthael and foe of your character. Now did these prior angels willingly follow Malthael or were they twisted? If they had their wills bent to server the Reaper we could see lots of varieties in minions in Pandemonium, as all demons and angels will all be fair play before the Reapers whims.

I’m working on a breakdown of the video, full implications of each scene and further speculation on some of the questions that have arisen from the trailer. Stay tuned for more!