Character Classes | The High Heavens | The Burning Hells | Humans | Eldritch
Most of the beings from the Diablo universe are the creations Anu and his Angels from Heaven, Tethamet and his Demons from Hell, or the two sides' wayward hybrid offspring.
But not all.
Trag'Oul
Trag'Oul is a mystery, a dragon-like serpent that appeared in Sanctuary one day, choosing the Creators' son Rathma to be their student and prophet. Whatever their origins, their motives are clear: to maintain the Balance.- Balance Between Good and Evil: The dragon was the one who taught Rathma his ideology of the Balance.
- Draconic Abomination: Trag'Oul is an entity nearly as old as the cosmos itself, but completely outside the origins of nearly every other entity in the universe. Nobody really understands who or what they were besides possibly Rathma himself, but they're an entity so alien to the setting that the term "dragon" is less of an accurate identification of their species than the closest thing to a label possible to describe them.
- Have You Seen My God?: Trag'Oul has not been seen for millennia.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Trag'Oul is some kind of giant serpent that 'phases' in and out of reality.
Tree of Whispers
The Tree of Whispers is a .... being note introduced in IV. While nominally a tree, it can be considered a character by itself. As its name may suggest, it knows many secrets and is willing to share them, for a price. It is found in Hawezar, and the region largely lies within its shadow.- Above Good and Evil: As sinister and disturbing as it is, the Tree of Whispers seemingly has no morality of its own. It has no preference between or grudges towards Heaven, Hell, or Sanctuary and seemingly has no overarching agenda of its own. The only thing it seems to care about it gathering as much information for itself as possible. It is upfront with its targets and never forces a deal, but it will collect any debt it is owed with ruthless efficiency.
- Berserk Button: The Tree always collects its debts, and has no tolerance for anyone who tries to escape from their end of the deal. Elias' attempt to cheat it especially infuriates it because, since it has no true knowledge of immortality or how to break it, it's effectively powerless to stop him and needs the Wanderer's help to do so. To add salt to the wound, it does have some idea of how Elias gained his immortality; after all, it did (vaguely) know the existence of the coffin gateway. It just didn't know what or where the coffin leads to, and didn't get its own agents to investigate it before the Wanderer came along.
- The postgame reveals that it's aggravated by how chatty freshly collected heads tend to be. Once again, Elias is a prime source of its anger in this regard.
- Botanical Abomination: It looks like a gnarled, dead tree, but is a sentient supernatural entity of unknown powers and origins that shares forbidden knowledge to those willing to pay its price. People who spend their lives studying the ancient lore of creation admit to not having the slightest idea how to explain it.
- Deal with the Devil: To gain knowledge from it is to seal your fate. Once it tells you a requested secret, you're marked to have your head join the others hanging from after death it for eternity. Normally it will leave a victim to live the remainder of their lives in peace and only collect after they die on their own. However, if someone tries to cheat it, it will dispatch its agents to hunt them down and collect their debt the hard way.
- Fate Worse than Death: Anyone who gets a secret from it will eventually have their heads removed from their bodies upon death and strung up to dangle from its branches, undying, conscious, but immobile, for the rest of time.
- Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge: The Tree of Whispers has gathered a massive amount of arcane secrets over its existence and is willing to part with some...for a high price.
- Knowledge Broker: A sinister version. Anyone may seek its help if they want to learn something. The price, on the other hand...
- Logical Weakness: Immortality is the one subject that eludes the Tree. Because the Tree of Whispers gains nearly all of its knowledge from the heads it takes from debtors after their death, it logically has no information of how to gain or remove immortality. When Elias became immortal himself to cheat the Tree, it was incapable of doing anything to collect because none of its deceased former debtors knew anything about what method he used to obtain immortality or how to undo it. However, with Elias's head added, it should possess the knowledge; whether it would share this knowledge remains to be seen.
- Mind Hive: Each of the undying heads hanging from the Tree's branches are psychically linked with it, giving it an immense store of ancient and forbidden knowledge.
- Mouth of Sauron: It "speaks" through the heads hanging from its branches. Usually involving multiple heads speaking in unison.
- Off with His Head!: When one of its debtors dies, it will dispatch a crow servant to decapitate their corpse and deliver their head to be reanimated and hung from its branches as a macabre decoration forever.
- Outside-Context Problem: It is an ancient, supernatural being of unexplained powers and origins. All that is known about the Tree is that it's neither demonic or angelic and has knowledge that no one on Sanctuary should have. Elias was only able to learn the ritual to summon Lilith before Diablo IV by dealing with it.
- Quest Giver: After Lilith's defeat, in the postgame the Tree offers the Wanderer quests to hunt down targets who have attempted to escape their debt to it.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: The heads on its branches contain the souls of their original owners. All of them are left trapped on the Tree, forced to remain with the collective with seemingly no hope of ever moving on to an afterlife.
